


Song About An Angel

by devilotte (8hungrydevils)



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, Eventual Smut, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-15 23:24:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 34,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5804323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8hungrydevils/pseuds/devilotte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During adventures and separations, bouts of self-doubt and jealousy, MacCready struggles to come to terms with his relationship with Lana. </p><p>MacCready POV with F!SS named Lana. A little headcanon nonsense here and there, mostly to try and fill canon gaps in a fun way.</p><p>Rated E for later chapters, a smattering of smut and MacCready still cusses in his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first post, so apologies for any noob-like missteps here. This is my own fun little way of trying to flesh out my daydreams of the MacCready romance with Nora (named Lana here, to keep it distinct). I'm rushing to finish it, as my school semester starts tomorrow :( May come back and make small edits for cohesion, but will keep notes. Thanks for reading!

He hadn’t planned on standing up. Winlock and Barnes may have been breathing up his air, but MacCready already knew they weren’t going to do anything stupid like start a fight in Hancock’s place. 

He’d planned on keeping himself parked in that chair, the one with the perfectly comfortable indentation of his own ass, which he’d been working on for the past three weeks. 

He’d planned on nursing his glass of whiskey while he listened to their threats, refilling the glass using the half-empty bottle on the table next to him, and then nursing the rest of the bottle after they’d left. Hell, maybe he’d have ordered a second bottle; it’s not every day you get a visit from old friends, why not celebrate? That way Ham could have kicked him out a little earlier tonight, instead of waiting until sunrise like he did the previous few nights. 

Each morning Ham had sent him stumbling back to his room at the Rexford only to begrudgingly let him back in when the Third Rail reopened a few hours later, smelling and looking worse every time. He almost couldn’t get in this night; apparently he was now below the acceptable level of piss and alcohol smell and was ruining the atmosphere. MacCready had to remind Ham of his very friendly arrangement with Mayor Hancock himself, the owner of this fine establishment, and of the very friendly work he did for Mayor Hancock just the week before. But not before also mentioning how much the Third Rail and all of its fine clientele regularly smelled like piss and alcohol. 

MacCready had a feeling he might not be let in tomorrow. 

But then she walks in and stops right in the doorway, not even trying to hide the fact that she’s watching the whole exchange. He makes a point to not acknowledge her. He’s handling his business. 

He asks them if they should take it outside. 

He wonders if he really smells as bad as Ham said. 

He takes another swig from his glass. What the hell does he care how he smells? 

And then there he was, up on his feet, reminding these assholes who they’re dealing with; the best sharpshooter the Gunners had ever seen. He’s barking, but Winlock and Barnes don’t bite. Eventually, they turn and they leave. 

He lets himself look at her now. She’s glancing back through the door where Winlock and Barnes had just left, but he sees her lift her chin just slightly in a nod. She has someone else with her. There’s something strange about her. Her skin is deep and warm and has a shine even in the dim red light of the VIP room, and so does her thick, chin-length hair. There’s a softness to her, from her cheeks down to her curvy hips, the kind he’d only ever seen on women in pin-ups and Nuka Cola posters. But slung across her back is some kind of modded combat rifle, just the nose of it visible behind her leather shoulder guard. Everything fitting her perfectly, like it was made for her, like she was born in it.

It takes him a second to process that she’s wearing a fucking vault suit under her armor. And then another to notice that she’s looking at him now, watching him stare, a tiny smirk at the corner of her mouth. He finds himself defensive.

“Look, lady. If you’re preaching about the Atom, or looking for a friend, you’ve got the wrong guy. If you need a hired gun … then maybe we can talk.” A hired friend could work too, he thinks to himself, but she’s probably some kind of freak, running around in a vault suit like that. 

She’s cautious. She asks about Winlock and Barnes. He answers her honestly enough. Pretty much everyone in the Commonwealth knows he ran with the Gunners at this point and wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. Winlock and Barnes were making sure of that.

Her ears seem to perk up at the mention of Gunners.

He tells her that his rate isn’t negotiable, but she smiles at him and negotiates anyway. He tells himself that he accepts the offer because he really needs the caps. When she agrees and turns to walk away, motioning at him to come with her, he notices a glint of gold on her ring finger. But he also gets a glimpse of the rest of that vault suit. 

“Hey. What’s your name?” he finally asks. 

She looks over her shoulder and gives him a smirk that he’d never forget. “It’s Lana. Now come on. There’s something I want to do.” 

Hell, he’d have taken less to follow this dame around.


	2. Chapter 2

They’d barely made it out of Goodneighbor before she’d gotten him into a shitstorm of trouble. 

“So what’s up with the vault suit?”

“Hm?” She didn’t look at him when he spoke. Her brown eyes were constantly darting around, alert, taking in the ruins of the buildings. “What about it?”

“Like are you really from a vault, or are you just one of those freaks who’s willing to kill for a Pip Boy?”

She actually looked at him now and smiled. Damn, she was pretty. “What do you think?”

“I think you have enough teeth in your skull to convince me you just might be from a vault.” 

“Come on, this way.” She waved for him to follow, taking a right turn down the next street that wasn’t completely blocked by debris. She must be a vault dweller if she’s dumb enough to walk around these streets in the middle of the night, a duffle bag of god-knows-what junk slung over her shoulder, and her gun still holstered. His rifle was held firmly in his two hands, where it belonged. 

“Ah there it is.” She picked up the pace and began jogging down another street. MacCready recognized where they were. 

“Hey! Wait a sec! Don’t go run- shi-!” he tried to call after her without raising his voice, but she completely ignored him, slipping between two barricades with giant white skulls painted on them.

“I’d passed by here on my way earlier,” she said, carefully stepping over the bodies of two dead Gunners. MacCready could see at least one more on the other side of the street.

“Are you fu ... you have got to be kidding me. You did this?” He turned over one of the bodies with his feet. Three shots with the rifle: one center mass, one below the right clavicle and the third in the gut. Guess she wasn’t as much of a soft little vault dweller as she looked. 

She was fiddling with her Pip Boy. “Well, me and Piper.”

“That pretty, stuck-up Diamond City chick who gave me a dirty look when you sent her packing back at the Third Rail?” 

“How did you know she’s from Diamond City?”

“Well, she had nice teeth too. But not as nice as yours.” 

She looked at him from above the Pip Boy, teasing, “How did you know she’s stuck up?” 

“That one was written across her forehead. In neon lights,” he sighed. 

She looked up from her Pip Boy, squinting up at the building, counting the floors maybe. “You been in here before?” she asked. 

“Haven’t had the pleasure, but I know they’ve had this place on lock for awhile. Probably have a good arsenal in there but minimal company of men. I’d say 15 at most …” He was frowning in thought, and she caught it. “Unless?” 

“Unless Winlock and Barnes decided to crash here before they moved on. They’d have a handful of lackeys with them,” he said.

“Are those two dangerous?”

“About as good as Gunners get.” 

She didn’t look up from fiddling with her Pip Boy again. 

He cleared his throat. “That is to say, not as good as me.” That made her crack a smile and put her arm down.

“So can we get the heck out of here or what? The Gunners are coordinated. They’re probably already aware you killed their night shift, and they’ll probably be sending guys to get the bodies soon. Loot them and let’s get going.”

“I already looted them,” she said casually as she pulled a shotgun out of her duffle bag and secured it to her rig. She pulled the combat rifle over her shoulder and checked the magazine, before slinging it back into place, and then did the same with the silenced pistol holstered at her thigh. “I want to see what else they have in there.”

Okay, he admitted, he was more than a little turned on. But this was nuts. “Hey, you just hired me and all, so 200 caps ain’t a bad deal for an hour’s work. But I was hoping not to be marched into my doom so soon. I can’t exactly protect you if I’m dead.”

“Who said anything about protection?” she was smirking at him again, that god damned perfect little mouth twisted over her perfect little teeth. 

She didn’t wait for him to pick up his slackened jaw before cracking one of the doors open, listening for a second, and then ducking inside. He groaned, but he followed her. “Whatever you say, boss.”

\---

She was crouched next to a terminal desk, taking in the sounds and what was visible of the layout. She was also taking a bunch of garbage. She reached around the desk and grabbed a couple of old coffee mugs and some pencils and stuffed them into her bag. “What the hec-,” he started, but she shushed him. She pointed one finger to the left, around the corner where they couldn’t see, and then two fingers towards the right, behind what looked like a glass reception window. He quieted down and listened, straining to hear over the low hum of electricity that was all over this place. She was right. Slow footsteps to the left, and to the right, two Gunners were whispering, sounding nervous and upset. Probably about the bodies outside. So, they were in luck after all; they hadn’t alerted their commander yet.

When he looked up at her this time, she was watching him closely. He understood her silent question. Could he believe she was capable enough for this? Was he ready to trust her? To follow her into a serious gunfight with his former gang, a group of hardened, organized mercs with a serious arsenal at their disposal?

He took a deep breath, and then nodded. He was confident in his own skill, even amongst the ranks of the Gunners. And heck, if she was half as capable as she was appearing to be, this was going to be a hell of a lot of fun to witness. 

She moved to the right side of the wall and faced the entrance of the reception office, her silenced pistol drawn, and then nodded toward the area to the left. He nodded back, moved to the corner of the wall, and then in one smooth motion broke cover and raised his rifle. The Gunner was maybe 20 feet away, at profile to him, just about to yawn, gun held slack at his side. MacCready exhaled and pulled the trigger. The bullet went into the Gunner’s right cheek and out of his left temple, blood splattering across the far wall before the body slumped slowly to the floor.

Sure enough, the sound caused the other two Gunners to come running. She was on them just as they cleared the door, putting two in the back of the slower one, and then a clean shot through the throat of the other as they turned around to see what was happening. 

God damn was she beautiful. 

She crouched over the body closest to her and started pocketing ammo, caps, an inhaler of jet. He moved to do the same to the dead fool with an O- tattooed on his forehead and a bullet in his throat. “Friend of yours?” she laughed at him. 

He grimaced, rightfully ashamed that just a few months ago, he was one of these creeps. “They’re scum. All of them. I’ll see every last one of them in hell.” 

There was a shout from above, followed by running footsteps. Someone must have spotted them. Lana smiled, holstering the pistol and pulling out the shotgun. “Guess you’ll have that chance. Shall we hold the door open for them?”

He felt the blood rush through his head, his gut tightening and his vision clearer, a high he hadn’t felt in months. Not since he ran with the Gunners, if he was being honest. To know he could still feel that, all while turning his sights on the assholes who’d made the last year of his life a living hell, and by following the whim of a badass chick in a tight-assed suit … well, he had to say his day turned out pretty damned good. He just had to be sure to live to tell about it.

“Right behind you, boss.”

\---

Even with all the noise, they managed to take most of the floors with the element of surprise. The Gunners were always one step behind, getting picked off when they came to investigate the noises, the bodies they’d left behind. This team was real amateurs, MacCready thought. Even the kids in Lamplight would have known better. 

Lana led the way, crouching behind cover, only breaking it when she knew she had a clear shot. MacCready had a good chance to observe her. He’d never heard of 111, the giant, golden, embroidered numbers on her back. And he was pretty good at paying attention to rumors about vaults. Growing up next to 87 had that effect on you. You started to wonder what other terrible, fucked up things were being unleased on the world by Vault-Tec. Was Lana one of them? 

She was good. A natural, honestly. She knew when to move, when to listen. Hearing and eyesight must be pretty good, things not altogether ordinary out in the wastes, although places like Diamond City were still keeping people together pretty well. She wasn’t a sharpshooter like himself, but she rarely wasted a bullet. 

But she made mistakes, fumbled here and there. She had a habit of freezing to the spot while she was shooting; it worked well enough when she was crouched behind cover, but she’d ended up taking a pretty direct blast from a laser pistol in her right shoulder after she couldn’t move out of sight fast enough. Sometimes she’d pull the trigger three times when one would do, out of fear, or maybe just not being able to tell if the first shot was fatal. He swore he even caught her yelping once, when a female Gunner came up quietly behind her. MacCready ended up taking a blow to the ribs with a shock baton from that one, although he still managed to front kick that idiot just far enough for Lana to blast her with the shotgun.

So, super soldier experiment she was not. But she still had a sizable pair of balls tucked somewhere in that tiny suit. 

He didn’t get to see just how quite big they were until they’d reached the top floor.

It was quiet, no one in sight, no sounds. The whole space was open except for a few doors to the balcony and a small office in the corner. They’d looked at each other, shrugging, thinking they’d cleared the place, before standing up out of their cover to take a better look around. It was a bad mistake.

Lana had moved behind a desk to pack more junk into her bag, while MacCready moved further across the room. By the time he heard the spinning, it was too late.

“Get down!” he yelled, turning on his heel and scrambling to jump for cover. The mini-gun had heated up by then and bullets were spraying all around him. As he’d hit the floor he felt a hot, wet sensation spread across his back. 

Fuck. 

His senses were a mess. He couldn’t hear a damn thing over the gunfire, but he knew he was on the other side of the desk where Lana had been standing. He dragged himself along the ground, gun still gripped in front of him, trying desperately to get around the desk and away from the doorway where the shooter stood. 

He’d almost reached it when he heard, or maybe felt, the Gunner approaching behind him with ground-shaking, metallic stomps. He was in fucking power armor. And the mini-gun was spinning up again. MacCready heard a whine coming out of his mouth, so distant it didn’t register as his own at first. Was the end really going to be this pathetic?

And then Lana’s boots were in front of him, so close they’d almost kicked the gun out of his hands. He fell over onto his back and looked up at her.

She was holding a god damned missile launcher. 

She fired it, the light from it illuminating her gritted teeth, her sweaty, twisted expression. The recoil pushed her back two steps and nearly dropped her to a knee. 

The shot hit the Gunner square in the chest, plates of power armor flying off of the frame as he too was pushed back. One hand dropped from the mini-gun, and for a split second Mac thought it was over right then. 

The Gunner howled in a way MacCready had never heard a person do before, like a wild animal. He was swaying in the power armor, but he managed to lean forward, stomping one foot in front of the other while raising the mini-gun once again. 

“Shit!!” he heard Lana scream. She was scrambling, falling over to the side of the desk where Mac couldn’t see, fumbling with the launcher. And then she was standing over him again, snapping the tube shut with another missile. 

The Gunner was barely 15 feet away when she fired the second shot. They were blinded, deaf, covered in burning heat and debris and smoke. It wasn’t the first time MacCready had been next to a blast like that, but holy hell was it terrifying. Time froze, and all you could do was wait, detached from your body, your senses, everything, wait until you knew what damage was really done. 

MacCready had no idea how much time had passed, but he felt hands on him, shaking him, checking him. When his vision came back, somewhat, he could tell that it was Lana leaning over him, her hands moving across his chest, his neck. 

“… Hey. Hey kid. Can you hear me?” 

He sputtered for a second, ash in his mouth. “Yeah boss.”

“Can you move?”

“Do I have to?” 

He could feel the smirk more than see it. “Come on, you look ok. Let’s get you up.” She leaned down, putting her hand under his back and pulling up. MacCready winced, gritting his teeth. Well, at least he was feeling something. He was able to sit up, but man, did it hurt.

“Shit kid …” She pulled her hand back to look at it. Bright red. She flipped a switch on her Pip Boy and MacCready was briefly washed out in green. She moved around to his back to get a better look. 

He heard her exhale. “Well, you’re just grazed. I think. But there’s blood all over the place. We have to get you back to Goodneighbor and clean you up.” 

He managed to smile. “Just when I thought I’d escaped that dump.”

He waved Lana off and stood up, the way he remembered Duncan learning to stand up, slowly and from all fours. His head was still pounding from the explosion, and his mouth tasted like burnt metal, but he knew he’d be fine. He’d just taken about ten years bending over to pick up his gun when he noticed Lana clambering over the dead Gunner’s smoking wreck of a corpse. He saw her put her hand near the power armor and then snatch it back, shaking off the heat. He watched as she reached for what looked like a disintegrating old newspaper and used that to grip a plate of the armor, then put a foot onto the frame for leverage.

“What … are you doing,” MacCready deadpanned. 

She yanked twice and the plate came off. “This is good stuff, can’t leave this behind.” She did the same for another plate. Then he watched her pick up the plates that had blown off in the blasts and were laying, blackened with soot, on the floor. She stuffed all of them into her duffle. The damn thing looked like Santa Claus’ sack, and it must have weighed a ton. She managed to, with some funny bending of her legs, lift it to her shoulder and get the strap across her body.

He nearly choked when he watched her eyeball the mini-gun next. 

“Hey. No way. Give that to me,” he said, shuffling towards her. 

“Oh, no, kid. I can’t make you carry that,” she said. She honestly looked worried. Or he hoped that she did.

“Carry it? I plan on murdering you with it!” They laughed together, and it was an incredible, crazy release. 

He carried it, and his body ached all the way back to Goodneighbor, but everything else felt pretty all right.


	3. Chapter 3

The adrenaline high didn’t quite combat the awkwardness of getting undressed for her, but it helped.

The Rexford only had one, very public bathroom. No showers, only stalls and sinks, but at least there was some form of running, albeit radiated, water. There was also a junkie laying face down into a toilet bowl. It didn’t faze either one of them. They were pretty lucky; it must have been the middle of the night and besides a half-asleep guard, no one was around. The guard already knew MacCready; he didn’t even blink when he saw the blood.

The mini-gun made him look twice.

Lana went to dump all of the stuff off in MacCready’s rented room. He supposed the Rexford staff just assumed he was a permanent fixture there these days, stumbling in and out, sometimes wasted both ways. He threw his hat into the sink next to him, and took the opportunity to look at himself in the mirror before Lana got back. 

He was a disgusting mess. He’d been pretty grimy before they’d even set out, but now he was a sweaty, bloody, soot-covered, filthy piece of gutter trash. That coupled with the realization that he’d lost some weight – not an easy thing to do for a 130-pound wastrel like himself – made him feel like a damned mole rat, crawling out of the Goodneighbor filth to nip at the first juicy morsel he could find.

In walked the juicy morsel herself, a few supplies tucked under her arm and in her hands, which she promptly dumped in the sink with MacCready’s hat. “Let’s get your shirt off first and clean you up, and I can take a look at that wound.”

“Whoa, hey lady, how about some dinner first? I know I’m pretty irresistible right now, but you need to control yourself.” He managed to get his belt undone while he laughed.

“Ha ha, very funny.” She feigned an annoyed face, but he could see the smirk under there. He knew to look for it now. Apparently he was taking too long, because she tugged his jacket until he faced her and she began unbuttoning it herself. He tried not to think about the shiny gold band on her finger. But he had no complaints. He couldn’t help but smile while he watched her pursing her lips, concentrating. She was a bit of a mess herself, soot on her face and hair, hands scratched up and dirty. For the few seconds that he got to stare at her unabashedly, he managed to forget how shamefully wretched he must seem to her. 

That feeling passed quickly, as she opened up his jacket and began easing it slowly off of his shoulders. She let him face the mirror again as she moved behind him, being careful to keep the jacket from tugging the wound. When she got it off of him, she folded it over and dumped it in another sink before going to work on his shirt. He pulled his scarf off and got it out of her way. 

She was clinical, efficient, and suddenly he had a major case of missing Lucy. Not unusual for him, especially at this time of night, but maybe not so much while he was undressing for an attractive woman in a grimy bathroom. 

Under the button-down was a completely blood-soaked tank. “Christ, kid! How many shirts are you wearing?” 

“Enough to stop a bullet?”

She laughed, pushing his arms and shirt up over his head. “You know, you might be right.”

Holding his arms up felt like shit, and he remembered it was the blow to the ribs killing him too. Lana noticed. “You want the stimpak now?”

“Nah. Let’s clean this up.” 

The smirk floated behind him in the mirror. “Show off.” She pulled a rag from the pile of supplies. MacCready tried to turn the water on in the sink. It made a couple of awful clanking noises before sputtering into a slow, and rather off-colored, stream.

The junkie in the stall, whom they’d both forgotten about, snapped awake. All three of them eyed one another, completely silent. When the junkie finished looking MacCready up and down, bloody and filthy, he shook his head and shuffled out of the room. 

There was a pause before they both burst into laughter, so hard that tears came out. “That bad, huh?” he asked, wiping his cheek. “Oh, you’re a complete mess alright,” she replied.

She wet the rag and gently pushed him over the sink, his forearms on the cold porcelain of the crooked basin. At first each soft swipe across his back meant the rag had to be rinsed, soaked with blood and grime, and he felt, and watched, as dark rivulets streamed over his neck and drip off of his chest. He stared at the black hole that was the drain, watching all of the tainted mess of the wasteland swirl down into it. The soft swipes got harder around the edges of the wound, down the small of his skinny back, around his neck. 

The intimacy of it hit him like a truck. He hadn’t been touched this way in so long, not since … and he was overwhelmed with the desire to turn around and kiss her, grab her roughly in his arms and squeeze her against him, into him, end this dark, heavy loneliness that had been slowly burying him in his grave. But what he wanted was Lucy, Lucy to be there behind him, waiting to comfort him, tell him that this was all a long, bad dream. Lucy’s sweet doe eyes, looking at him like he was still a human being and not a reckless murderer for hire. For Lucy to forgive him his sins. 

He was gripping the basin now. This wasn’t Lucy. Lucy was gone, and this was some stranger, whose reasons for being so intimate with him he couldn’t fathom. God knows what she really wanted from him. 

He actually snorted aloud after that thought. There was no question that a vast majority of people in this messed up world were looking to take advantage of anyone they could get a hold of. But he felt fairly certain that this incredibly beautiful, tough-as-nails, fricking vault dweller wasn’t looking to molest some hardened, filthy street urchin with rotten teeth that she’d paid 200 caps to lead around.

He looked up in the mirror, realizing that Lana was watching him again. “Hey, sorry. Just you know, wondering if you were going to chop me up in my sleep after this,” he said laughing. Laughing mainly at what a ridiculous tragedy he was. 

She seemed to contemplate that for a minute. “I’m a bit much, huh?”

“You’re a lot of something.”

She looked him in the eye, smiling almost shyly through the reflection. “I get that a lot. I just felt … responsible … for this one.”

Wow. He was actually surprised. He could probably count the times he’d remembered someone admitting to being sorry, let alone had them try to make up for it. He sure as shit wasn’t a great example. 

“Welcome to the Commonwealth, lady. You must be new here.” His tension subsided, a little.

She snorted. “Been here a lot longer than you, kid.” She was older than him definitely, but he didn’t think by much. But then he thought again, with her smooth skin and healthy teeth, she might have had 10 years on him and he wouldn’t know. Vault-Tec certainly made ‘em better than the wastes. 

How little he knew then.

She handed him the rag, forcing him to release his white-knuckle grip on the sides of the sink. He wet it and brought the cold, refreshing cloth to his face, just pressed it there for a minute and consciously tried to breathe, before beginning the process of wiping down his filthy face and chest. This was probably the cleanest he’d been in weeks.

“I’m going to have to stitch it, but it’s not as deep as I’d thought. Just longer. You have a hell of a swan dive there, kid.”

“Yeah, you should really see me in water. And don’t bother with the stitches. The stim will have it closed up by the morning.”

“That’s how you got these, though,” she said. He felt her fingertips just barely run across the jagged line across his right shoulder blade, then the smaller puncture scar near the small of his back. He knew there were a bunch more, collected over the past two years as he cared less and less about treating his wounds cleanly. 

“But these …” there were her fingers, with more pressure this time, tracing a line along his side, and his hands gripped onto the sink with white-knuckles again. “These were stitched first.” 

Lucy had done those. He was mad that Lana could even see them, barely visible as they were. That she could read his body like a damned book, that he’d inadvertently let her read him. Hey, here’s that time period where someone gave a shit about you, where you gave a shit about yourself. That’s long gone, isn’t it?

He recoiled from her fingers like she’d burned him, but he instantly regretted it. She’d taken a step back, startled, and so when he looked over his shoulder to speak, he made sure his voice was calm, even. “You really … you just don’t have to. You don’t owe me anything.”

She thought about it for a second, before reaching for the Med-X and needle and thread. “I know. I paid you, remember?” 

He smiled.

\---

When they finally stepped out of the bathroom, it must have been 3 a.m. The guard was snoring in his chair by the door. Lana stopped to look at his useless form. MacCready could see the wheels turning in her head, but he had no clue what she was up to. Then she walked over to the little bar right next to him, stepped behind it, and stole a bottle of bourbon that was sitting on a shelf. She held it up for MacCready, questioning.

He liked that. 

They took it back to his room. She’d asked him about getting her own, when they’d first arrived back, but he’d scolded her for trying to waste caps like that when he could sleep on the couch. Having separate rooms was some kind of weird, crazy luxury in the wastes and she’d better get used to a lot less. He didn’t tell her that he found her incredibly attractive and that it might have influenced his opinion a little. 

When he’d said it, he also didn’t expect to be walking out of that bathroom feeling more vulnerable then a damn baby. 

She’d given him a change of clothes, just a white t-shirt and jeans that she’d pocketed from god knows where, so he could let his scrubbed jacket and shirt dry. And probably to just be a little bit less of a gutter rat for a while. He threw his stuff on the couch and looked around the room for something to drink out of. There were empty bottles everywhere but only one cup, and when he held it up to look, he was pretty sure there was something growing at the bottom of it. When he turned around, she was holding out two porcelain cups, the ones that she’d stolen from the Mass Fusion building. 

He laughed. “Guess there was some point in you picking up all that worthless junk.” He set them down and began opening the bottle of bourbon.

“Certainly. Hey, you’d better bring a bigger pack with you tomorrow.” She sat down at the bottom of the bed and started unbuckling her pieces of armor. 

He groaned and poured an extra splash in his cup. Once she’d pulled all of her guards off, he sat down and handed her a mug. They held them forward, both looking like they felt obliged to cheers to something. Then they both saw themselves for the tired, brainless pieces of shit they really were and laughed, clinking cups and taking a drink without a word.

He had no expectations of course, but he had to admit that a tiny part of him was proud to be having drinks with a beautiful woman in his hotel room. He was pretty sure she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever had a drink with, really. That’s part of what made him sure nothing would happen. 

“So you collect junk. Is that what inspires you to commit violent murder against large groups of heavily armed mercs?” He sank back against the creaky headboard, nursing his mug of alcohol, exhausted beyond belief but determined to learn what he could about Lana.

“Hah! Well, in a way I guess that’s true. I need all the resources I can get.”

“You and me both, sister. Are plates of power armor really worth anything? Can’t imagine you’d find many buyers for that. You’re going to end up lugging that heavy crap all across the Commonwealth.”

“I hadn’t thought about it, no. But I have some frames back in Sanctuary, I was going to fix them up and …”

“Did you say frames?”

“Yeah.”

“Power armor frames? … Multiple ones?”

She laughed, tucking a strand of her wavy brown hair behind her ear. “Yeah, I’ve managed to find three so far. One of them is just about complete, but they’re all pretty beat up. I think they’re going to need a lot more work.”

“And you … work on them?” 

She huffed a little at his incredulity. “Is that difficult to believe?”

“Well … yeah. I mean, not for you personally, just for anyone. Outside of Brotherhood and some of the Gunners, I haven’t met many people who know anything about power armor, let alone anyone that collects them.”

“I suppose I’ve had an unusual history with them. My father was an engineer, building suits for the army. I used to work at his factory while I was putting myself through school. That’s how I met Nate actually.” She was spinning the ring around her finger, lost in thought. “He was a requisitions officer.”

So much of that didn’t make sense to him, but he was distracted. The husband. “Nate?”

She grew quiet. He felt bad for blurting that out, feeling he knew where this was going already. Enough of it was right there on her face.

“You asked me earlier if I was from a vault.” She looked pensive, her voice low. 

“It was rhetorical. You’re clearly from a vault,” he laughed. 

“Yeah,” she chuckled. “Okay. Well. I’ve told this story a few times now, but it’s still kind of … difficult. But if we’re going to keep travelling together, and … I think we should, so you need to know. The vault I came from, 111, had us cryogenically frozen. I’ve only been out here for about three months.” She stopped to take a drink.

“Frozen? That’s pretty unbelievable. Since when?”

“… Since the bombs started falling.”

He became aware that his mouth was open. “You f- … you can’t be serious.”

She took another drink. 

“Nate and I, and our baby son Shaun, we lived in Sanctuary Hills. Before … all this. We were allowed entry into the local vault because of our history with the military, but we knew nothing about it. Only that the television was telling us one day that bombs were falling, and we knew we needed to get to that vault if we wanted to live. As soon as we made it in, they put us into these pods …”

She drifted for a moment, and MacCready let her.

“Nate took Shaun into the pod with him. If I had … well. Ten years ago, people broke into the vault and unfroze us. They took Shaun, and they murdered Nate for trying to stop them. They sabotaged all of the other pods, but they put me back under. The staff was long dead. I don’t know what happened, but I’m the only person that walked out of there alive.”

MacCready couldn’t speak. If he could, he wanted to tell her that they were so much more alike then she knew. But it was preposterous too, trying to tell someone who only three months ago was living in a different time, a different world, that you could even remotely know what they felt. It seemed cheap equating his own problems to hers at this point. 

But he understood all at once, her gentle touch, her loneliness, and suddenly he felt a little bit less of his own.

“I’m so sorry,” was all he could offer. He drank, a big fat pull that burned his throat and killed the rest of his mug, then he poured more, first into hers and then his own.

“Thank you.” Her eyes were glassy in the dim light of the one half-broken lamp next to the bed. She took a drink and cleared her throat. “Three days ago, I tracked down my husband’s killer and my son’s kidnapper, and I put a bullet in his skull.”

MacCready’s eyes felt like they’d popped out of his skull, and he sat bolt straight, nearly spilling his liquor. “You what?! You did? Did you find your son??”

“No. The Institute has him.”

MacCready felt like one of those swooning ladies in his old Grognak comics, ready to faint and be rescued. The god damned boogeyman of the Commonwealth, the Institute. And here he was, getting involved with their number 1 fan. 

He couldn’t leave it at that. He asked her everything he could think of; what she knew, where she’d been, what she thought was really happening. She tried her best to explain. She described why she was in Goodneighbor in the first place; using a chip from Kellogg’s brain to try to chase down more information. She described the people helping her so far, like Piper, the woman he’d briefly met at The Third Rail, who turned out to be a reporter from Diamond City, and Nick Valentine, who he’d heard of before but never met.

They were up for hours, talking, drinking, staring up at the ceiling. MacCready had wanted desperately to ask her about her life before, but whenever Shaun came up, or they discussed the Institute itself, he saw her unconsciously play with her ring, her eyes get glassier. It was all the same; he wasn’t really in the mood to talk about his own past. But asking her about her experiences in the Commonwealth, her short-term plans, those were professional interests, things that would help him help her. 

And he wanted to help her. Maybe he was only a hired murderer in the end, but he understood her longing for her son, her feelings of helplessness. Her deep drive to fix things, make them right. He felt like he was witnessing his own pains, the ones he could rarely show to others, and somehow seeing them outside of himself was just … a relief. It didn’t solve anything so much as make him more determined to find a way to help his own son, something he’d begun to lose hope in.

At some point he realized that she’d fallen asleep, empty cup still in her hand. Her brow was furrowed, lips pinched tight in a worried look. MacCready took the cup and put it aside. He picked her up, just enough to slide her up and get her feet onto the bed, before throwing himself onto the couch on the other side of the room. 

Despite the lingering aches of his wounds, the hovering threat of even more battles on the horizon, it was the first night he slept soundly in a long time.


	4. Chapter 4

MacCready woke up late. He knew he’d dreamed, but the images, the feelings, had all scattered like crows as his eyes opened. He dropped his hand to where he’d left his clothes on the floor, but after tapping around, he felt only dusty hardwood.

“Sorry,” Lana said. She was already fully dressed, leather armor on, and from the looks of it, she’d cleaned up a bit too. “I patched up your jacket and shirt.” She threw them onto his stomach, to which he exaggeratedly _oofed_.

“Thanks, mom,” he smiled while groggily sitting up.

There was silence for a second. Lana’s back was turned to him while she dug around her pack. MacCready mentally kicked himself. That was a bone headed thing to say, given all she’d revealed last night. “Hey, that was kind of in poor taste, wasn’t it?”

He expected her to look upset when she turned around, but she seemed to find his apology funny. “I was a lawyer, kid. You’re going to have to do a lot better than that to offend me. Here.”

She handed him a can of purified water and a box of Fancy Lads, leaving a set of the same out for herself. He opened the plastic sleeve and crammed almost the entire yellow, spongy cake in his mouth.

“M gonna eaf thith, becuth I loff theeth, but thith ith not breakfath.”

Lana just calmly sipped her water. “That was horrifying.”

\---

He threw his clothes on in record time, and completely haphazardly. He was pretty sure some buttons ended up in the wrong holes and that his shoulder strap was twisted in the back, but he didn’t care. Lana was waiting for him in the lobby and he was running after her like a puppy.

She was talking with Rufus when he spotted her from the stairway, but she excused herself when she met his eyes. MacCready made a point to slow his walk and greet all of the staff that were gathered in the lobby, making sure they saw him leave with the gorgeous brunette. So maybe it didn’t quite make up for seeing him stumbling around like a depressed alcoholic for the past few weeks, but it had to help, right?

“Hey, that guy asked me to track down a brewing machine,” she told him as they walked out of the hotel.

“No shit?”

He led her through Goodneighbor’s streets. It was a nice day, clear skies and the air cool and crisp. Lana tilted her head back as they walked and took in a deep breath. She smiled, holding back a laugh.

“Well?” he asked her.

“Well, it kind of smells like urine.”

He laughed.

“But, should be a great day to get on the road.”

“Hell yeah, boss.”

They turned a corner and MacCready led the way into an open storefront. It took a second for their eyes to adjust to the shade. Daisy spotted them first.

“Look at you up early, MacCready. I’d thought you’d left town last night.” Daisy’s easy smile widened when she saw Lana appear behind him. “Ahhh, and you have company. Hancock’s newest friend. Hello again, dear,” Daisy said, leaning over her counter. Apparently they’d met before.

‘Newest friend’?

“Well I told Lana here about the best breakfast in Goodneighbor. You wouldn’t make me out to be a liar, would you?”

Daisy addressed Lana as she set out a can of cram and some utencils. “When MacCready says best, he really means ‘free on days when he can’t rub two caps together.’”

Mac threw some caps on the table, laughing. “Well, today is one of those other days.”

“It certainly is. Look at how clean you are!” Daisy leaned over and pinched his cheek like a child. “Oh, you’re just glowing like the baby that you are! Must have been a good night’s rest, hmm? Hey your holster strap is all twisted here, let me help you fix that …”

“OKAY, THANK YOU DAISY,” Mac started stepping backwards, his hands up in feigned surrender. “We’re just going to sit out here on the bench, Daisy. Because it’s a nice day out, Daisy. Thank you for making our meal, Daisy!” He led Lana to the bench outside of Daisy’s shop, shaking his head as he sat.

Lana chuckled. “She seems to like you.”

“I try to help her out whenever I can. And, well, like you heard. She helps me out too. She’s one of the best things about Goodneighbor as far as I’m concerned.”

“A merc with friends. That seems unusual. You should put her on your resume as a recommendation.”

Mac smiled. It was nice seeing Lana in the sunlight. Her wavy brown hair looked soft, a warm brown, the same color as her eyes. Though she had a hint of dark circles under her eyes, her skin really was beautiful, radiant, unlike anyone he’d ever seen. Her full lips were pursed into just the hint of a smile. None of the things that she’d said last night could really be seen on her face. Were they really true? Could that kind of burden be on a person, on Lana, without cracking that gorgeous veneer?

Was she able to handle this world because it wasn’t truly hers? Or did being displaced somehow make her strong, more determined?

“God, what was it like?” he blurted out, almost without thinking.

“You mean, before the bombs?” she asked. He nodded.

She sighed, smiling. “I wouldn’t know where to start. Well, you weren’t attacked by giant mutant animals or shot at by robots on the street.” She stopped to think for a moment, and her expression turned somber. “You weren’t attacked by people. You weren’t forced to kill.”

He snorted. “I guess I can’t really imagine the past. That’s the world I was born into. You can’t trust people. Not with your life.”

She seemed to really appraise him for a second, looking at his face, his body, his hands. He almost blushed. “MacCready, how old are you?”

“I’m 22.”

“Geez, you really are a baby.” Her eyes crinkled as she smiled a big, toothy grin.

“Hey! And how old were you? Before adding two hundred years, that is?”

“32 …”

He opened his mouth, only to shut it again.

“… kid.”

“Okay, okay. You’ve got me on age. _Boss_. Not that there was any question of that, what with you being an icicle for a million years. Was it really that obvious that I’m younger than you?”

“No. You seem very … experienced,” she said carefully.

“Yeah, well,” he said, adjusting his hat. “You don’t get a lot of choice out here. You either grow up fast, or you die.”

“I imagine you being a real handful as a kid,” she teased.

Now he might have actually been blushing. “Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime. I’ll bet you were a real spoiled kid, all the dolls and tea parties you could handle.”

She laughed, squinting up at the building in front of them, reminiscing. “Actually, my dad used to tease me for being a little tomboy. Always riding my bike in the dirt, stealing the neighbor kid’s comic books.”

Mac sat up straight. “Did you say comic books?”

“Haven’t you met our illustrious Silver Shroud yet?”

Lana looked over MacCready’s shoulder and smiled, a blush forming on her cheeks.

There was no mistaking that voice. MacCready looked behind him, and low and behold, there was Hancock, taking a drag off of a cigarette. A couple of paces behind him was his creepy lap-dog, Fahrenheit. She’d always managed to rub MacCready the wrong way, and the way she was currently looking him up and down over her nose was just more of the same.

“The whack job running around Goodneighbor in a costume the other day? What about them?”

Hancock motioned his cigarette at Lana, who was laughing and covering her eyes.

“Wait … you?!”

“So I had a little fun with that one,” Lana admitted, sharing a knowing smile with Hancock.

Hancock clicked his teeth. “A little?”

“Okay, a lot.”

“The girl knows how to entertain, MacCready. Better make sure you can keep up.” Hancock was speaking to him, but his eyes never left Lana. Or some part of her, from what Mac was interpreting.

MacCready felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle at the whole exchange. “I’m sure I can manage.”

He heard Fahrenheit snort. He leaned forward, addressing Hancock but looking at his female companion, just as Hancock had done. “Hey Hancock, that smear of crap stuck to your shoe is making noises again.”

Hancock laughed, completely amused.

Fahrenheit flashed MacCready a big, shit-eating grin. “If you wanted to show me your cunt, MacCready, you should have just asked. I’d eat a sweet, pink little pussy like yours all day.”

MacCready didn’t even realize he was on his feet until he had Hancock hugging him, holding him back. “Whoooa, ladies, ladies,” Hancock was still laughing, despite having to put his whole body between MacCready and Fahrenheit. “Get a room, please.”

“How about you keep your little … pet, in check,” MacCready spat.

“Hey now, Daisy is calling you,” Hancock stepped back and straightened MacCready’s jacket and, funnily, the twisted leather strap of his holster that Daisy had teased him about. “Don’t let Fahrenheit get your panties twisted like that.”

MacCready gave Fahrenheit one last death glare while she continued to smile back at him cheekily, before he stomped his way into Daisy’s shop. Daisy had two plates of fried cram and razorgrain mush sitting on the counter.

“You all right there, Mac?” she asked.

“Just getting a little tired of people laughing at my expense is all,” he sighed, trying to calm down. He couldn’t really say why; Fahrenheit had a habit of singling him out and annoying him relentlessly whenever he was hanging around Hancock. It got to the point that he just stopped doing it, unless Hancock had a job for him.

“Well, it doesn’t surprise me they’re giving you a hard time. Our good mayor can get a little possessive,” Daisy grumbled.

“What are you …?” Mac started to ask. But he didn’t need to finish; he turned and saw that Hancock had taken his seat on the bench, arm casually around Lana’s shoulders, as he spoke to her in a way MacCready couldn’t hear. Lana seemed to listen intently. He swore he caught her little smirk just then.

Mac looked away. He felt a part of him just shut down. The fuck did he care? He was getting paid either way. The caps are what really mattered right now, and that’s the thought he returned to again and again when he needed it. “Thanks Daisy,” he said, going to grab the two plates.

Daisy put her hand over his wrist before he could take them. “He’s right though, you know. Don’t let that stuff get to you. Anyone who knows you, knows it’s not worth your time.”

He sighed, looking Daisy in the eyes, a real thank you. She seemed to know when he needed little reminders like that, and he appreciated it.

By the time he brought the plates over, Hancock was excusing himself.

“You let this guy here take good care of you,” he said, slapping his hand on MacCready’s shoulder. “There’s no better shot in the Commonwealth. And come back and see me soon, sister.” He strutted off, taking Fahrenheit by the waist and leading her away.

MacCready handed Lana a plate and took his seat again, somewhat mollified by Hancock’s comment.

“Ooh, I love cram!”

“You must be joking. Didn’t you people have real food back then? Not some irradiated meat paste in a can?”

“Well,” she spoke while munching on a slice of cram. “It was always a weird indulgence of mine. It does taste a little, uh, different. But not as much as you’d expect. I suppose that’s scary.”

“I can’t believe you’d admit to liking it,” he stirred the goopy razorgrain with his spoon, “with all of the pictures I’ve seen of the stuff you’d get to eat. If I were jealous of any of the pre-war nonsense, it would damn well be the food. That and the comic books.”

She was smiling at him for a minute before he finally asked, “What?”

“Nothing, just had an idea. I have a lot of stops to make, but I think you’ll get a kick out of the town I’m from. Sanctuary Hills …” she trailed off. He just watched her, waiting.

“Hey look,” she continued. “After what I told you last night. Knowing what I’m up against. And hell, all the things I haven’t told you, the kinds of things that I’ve been getting wrapped up in without even meaning to, the amount of work. Are you really okay to get involved with all that?”

“Look, I see this as a simple arrangement. You point, I shoot. I really don’t care who or what it is you get involved with, but that’s about as involved as I need to get.”

She nodded, seemingly convinced by his gruff speech.

He had to repeat it in his head to be sure he was convinced himself.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit content starts here. Hope you enjoy!

She wasn’t kidding about the amount of work. They’d set out on the road that afternoon and barely stopped moving to rest. Lana was thorough; she checked everything, nosed around every building, looked down every street, opening every empty cash register they stumbled across. Pretty much the opposite of the way that MacCready preferred to travel through ruined cities crawling full of raiders and super mutants and worse.

It felt like they could barely walk two steps without a vertibird flying above them. The heavy presence of the Brotherhood put MacCready on edge. It put everyone on edge, it seemed. In the early evening, they mistakenly stumbled too close to the Raider camp outside Haymarket Mall, a street that MacCready had travelled past with the Gunners before and not been bothered. This time, raiders were out in force, shooting at them on sight.

Lana was apparently the only one not on edge. She shot right back at them. The two of them took out the guards on the makeshift wooden parapet, and then Lana led the way around their defense to take care of the rest. As soon as they cleared those as well, they regrouped, checked their guns and organized their packs, and then Lana led them inside. With a stern and determined look on her face, she insisted on clearing the entire building.

They cleared four more places in the next three days, two more raider camps, one full of super mutants, and another infested with ferals, all while slowly moving their way Northwest. MacCready had hoped for more nights like their first, relaxing, drinking, getting to know one another better, but in truth they were both exhausted all the time, hunkering down in abandoned buildings at night, sleeping in shifts so they hadn’t the time to talk.

What they lacked in heartfelt conversation was made up for with little lessons. MacCready was determined to help her improve her shooting; they’d had no time for target shooting, and even if they had, it was too dangerous to be letting off shots and attracting attention in the crowded city streets when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Dense areas like this were populated with murderous, heavily armed gangs of one sort or another who were ready to attack two people alone, an easy looking score.

What he could do was teach her more about guns. She was already fairly knowledgeable; she showed him her combat rifle, which she’d done a decent job of modifying on her own. She even pulled out the battered issue of Guns and Bullets that taught her how to do it; she’d read it cover to cover so many times that the pages were falling out.

But guns were like air to MacCready. He could tell just by sound what type of gun an enemy was firing, if and how it was modded. He could tell by sight how many bullets the type of magazine held; he could keep count of how many times an enemy fired, how many times multiple enemies fired, know when they had to be out of bullets and use the timing to his advantage. And he never wasted his own bullets. One clean headshot was all that was really needed for most situations.

So maybe he couldn’t use a terminal to save his life. He was still a genius with numbers.

Lana was certainly impressed. When they’d break for a meal or to wait out a storm, she would break down guns they’d pilfered, ask MacCready incessant questions, put the guns back together. She was always learning, fixing, testing. He came to realize that it was almost a compulsion for her, always needing to be doing something, especially with her hands. She was smart, a fast learner, but she just needed more experience to approach anything like MacCready’s level of precision.

After a few more days, MacCready put his foot down. They needed to take a break. They needed sleep, real sleep, more than the four hours a night they’d been getting in the non-stop firefight that was first Boston, and now Cambridge. He was feeling like they’d gunned down half the Commonwealth at this point, and while her shooting was solid, it was only marginally improving. He knew he could improve it if they had someplace to practice safely.

She accepted, admittedly worn out, but only under the condition that there was an area she’d been meaning to clean up and prep as a settlement.

MacCready had a few choice words about that part of the deal, but Lana just laughed it off.

 ---

It turned out the place was an old drive-in movie theatre. They’d arrived in the morning and got to work right away. The clean up turned out to be nothing more than a handful of ferals. They took them out and then dragged the bodies to a ditch not far down the road, covering it over with a little loose dirt. Time consuming, but no problems there.

Then the real work began.

At this point, MacCready was convinced that being frozen for 200 years had made Lana’s brain melt into a watery goop, and it was just sloshing around in there, working against all logic and reason. That or she was a serious masochist and this was the absolute pinnacle of pleasure. But when the boss lady tells you to help push and drag a couple of rusty old car hulls or roll a few barrels of toxic waste into that same ditch you dragged ghouls into earlier, well, you bitch and you moan a bunch, and then you still do it.

They only had an hour or two left of sunlight when MacCready threw enough of a fit for Lana to agree to a shooting lesson. The set up was ideal; they had a fairly flat expanse that led to a hilly, wooded area, as well as the top of two structures, the diner with the projector tower attached and the massive projection screen, from which to shoot from. MacCready was convinced that with a couple of days here he could improve Lana’s form significantly.

He lined a handful of cans atop a car hull they had yet to move, still parked in front of the movie screen, before leading Lana onto the roof of the diner. It was hot up there; the whole damn building was covered in what was once shiny chrome plating. He threw a blanket down for her to lay on, feeling like a real gentleman for once. They were both sweaty and uncomfortable from the long day of work. He threw off his jacket and shirt, leaving on the dirty white tank, while Lana peeled off everything except the vault suit, leaving everything on top of her pack.

“All right,” he started, all business, “this lighting is really not ideal for practice. You’re gonna have a lot of heat mirage and the angle of the sun sucks, but it’s more about your form to start. Now lay prone, you’re going to shoot those cans.”

She’d gotten to her knees, combat rifle in her lap, when she spotted the cans. “They’re too far. There’s no way I can hit those.”

“Not with that attitude. Or that gun, for that matter. You’re shooting with this,” he said, handing her his gun, the far more precise of the two weapons.

She took it and lay down on her stomach like he’d asked.

He swallowed hard, realizing this might be more difficult than he anticipated.

There wasn’t much left to the imagination when she laid that way, the vault suit pulled tight and sticking to her skin. The curves of her ass, her hips, thick and round and just _perfect_. Hell, he’d looked at her a lot this past week, but hadn’t had the time or the opportunity to see her like this.

When she wiggled her hips down to find a more comfortable position, he nearly drooled on himself.

Shit. She was talking. “What?”

“I said, your scope helps, but I still think these are too far,” she repeated.

He kneeled down next to her and took the gun from her, handing her his binoculars instead. “Pick one,” he said.

She looked up at him, one eyebrow arched. “Second can from the right and straight on ‘til morning, Peter.”

“Who’s being childish here? Go on and look,” he said, waiting until she settled her eyes into the binoculars, smiling. He cocked the gun and pulled the trigger, barely a few seconds to do both. Lana watched as the exact can she selected flew off of the car, nothing else disturbed.

He was showing off now. He loved showing off for her.

She looked up at him again, giving him a sardonic grin.

“Impressed yet?”

“Okay, okay,” she said, taking back the gun. He noticed that she handled it a lot more reverently this time.

“Try for the left can,” he said. He didn’t bother pulling up the binoculars, instead watching Lana.

She took the shot, and missed, but not by much; he heard it plink off of the car roof.

MacCready leaned over her, pushing her fingers up. “Here, grip the forend further up. And don’t grip so tight, you’re getting too stiff when you pull the trigger, it’s less stable. And, uh,” he hesitated for a second before putting his hand on the back of her knees and pushing them apart, “here, you’ll do better with your feet apart, in a Y shape.”

She wiggled again, legs spread now, pushing her hips up for just a second, but long enough to make a bead of sweat drip down his throat.

And then he noticed it. He was staring, of course, at the the tight little crease between her glorious cheeks, when he realized that under a nearly invisible, tiny flap of fabric was a seam. A zipper. The damned suit unzipped all the way down, under her crotch and just a little bit back up her backside.

He threw himself down on the blanket next to her, putting his eyes in the binoculars. Well, he’d been wondering how she was taking a piss so quickly. He was hard as fuck now, a full on sweat breaking out all over his body, and he just needed to try, try _really hard_ , to make those bad, really bad, really _hot_ thoughts go away and get himself focused again.

It scarcely even registered to him when she took the next shot and hit. It was just barely, nicking the leftmost can in the side, but it was the correct can and just enough to send it tumbling off of the car.

“Yes. _Yes!_ ” she exclaimed. “You really know your shit, kid,” she said, lowering the scope enough to look over at him.

The expression he returned must have been intense, because her grin immediately dropped. “Hey, is everything okay? Did I fuck that up?” She looked at him quizzically, softly, genuine concern shaped between her two pouty lips.

MacCready completely lost control. He pushed himself on his elbows, throwing his body next to hers and he kissed her, his hand tangling into her hair, mouth forceful, messy, needy. His hat was knocked off of his head, the gun she held pushed to the side.

“Mac, wha- _ah_!” And it was that little gasp, that way her lips parted into his lips when he placed his hand on her hip, the way she turned her body toward him, into him, so that he could kiss her more, that let him know what he wanted, _needed_ , to do.

He pushed her onto her back and straddled her. She was staring at his hard on, tiny gasps escaping her parted lips, until his hands went to the zipper of her vault suit. Then she looked him in the eye, her sweaty cheeks flushed. Her chest was heaving, and when he saw her nipples harden, poking through the suit, he realized she wasn’t wearing a bra.

He pulled the zipper down, slowly, exposing more sweaty, flushed skin inch by inch. “Oh man. _Oh man_ ,” he was muttering under his breath, his eyes soaking up every bead of sweat, every scar and mole, every shadow of a curve. When he got to her navel, he moved himself between her knees and knelt down to run his tongue over the tiny cleft. She breathed in, one hand coming up into his hair, encouraging him. He began moving his lips around, kissing her skin, licking up the sweat and just breathing in her scent. They were both sticky and dirty and it only made him want her more, her smell intoxicating. He was sure he could smell something else …

He tugged the zipper down lower, exposing a tiny pair of white panties, and he pulled until the suit was split and the zipper out of his way. And yes, there was that scent; her panties were soaked, with sweat, yes, but also with that thick, heady perfume of desire. And without thinking twice he put his mouth on her, kissing her through the panties, hungry and desperate.

“Holy shit, MacCready …!” Her back arched, a low moan escaping her lips, and she was pushing her pussy further into his mouth. His erection was absolutely painful now, straining hard against his pants and the roof beneath him. He could barely think, his hips grinding into the metal, a beast in heat, all the while nibbling and nuzzling her roughly.

He couldn’t wait for it any longer, her little gasps, the bucking of her hips driving him insane. He went to pull her panties aside and he pulled them too hard, hearing a little tear somewhere. He didn’t care; now he could see her, her soft little curls and puffy pink lips that were glistening, dripping. He’d made it that way, made her wet and wriggling beneath him, and he wanted more now, he wanted her screaming, crying for him. He plunged his tongue into her, licked her up and down, wanting her to pour into him, wanting to drink her in. He kissed and licked all around her clit, never quite touching it, teasing.

Now she was the one with no control, gasping, calling his name over and over. He had to grip her thighs tightly she was bucking so much, back arching, both hands now tangled in his hair. He could tell it was coming soon; she was gripping his head now, grinding her pussy against his mouth, and his hips were grinding in response, using the friction with his pants to get off.

And then he had what he wanted. She screamed, head thrown back, thighs quivering under his grip, his tongue feeling the tight contractions inside her. Her pleasure brought him to the edge, moaning into her pussy, his hips grinding one last time before he came, spilling inside his pants like a damn kid. He couldn’t quite bring himself to give a shit.

Her hands let go of his head and moved to cover her face, her mouth still gasping for air. It took him a minute to gather the strength to get on his elbows and move, falling with a thump on his back next to her legs.

They’d been laying there for a few minutes in silence when Lana started laughing. MacCready had come down from his high enough to feel pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. “Yeah … hell. I’m sorry,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Sorry?!” she sat up on one elbow now, looking down at him. “Mac, I … I think I really needed that. Please don’t be sorry.”

He was still feeling kind of dumb, but he considered it. “Yeah. Yeah, I needed it too.”

She was leaning the other way now, rummaging through her pack. She laid back down on her back and nudged him on the shoulder, handing him a cigarette and lighter. “Oh man, I definitely needed this too.” He took it, sliding up so he could lie down on his back next to her.

The sun was almost set now, the horizon a range of reds and oranges, the rest a deep purple ink spilled across the sky. It was incredibly clear, the stars starting to flicker through the purple. They were both quiet, comfortable, not needing to speak. That same easy connection they had when they were cutting through lines of raiders, or sharing a brief, meager meal, or walking down an empty road one in front of the other, was just as present. MacCready felt near to a sense of peace, as near as he’d been in a long time, but it was still up there in the sky, floating just past the smoke from his cigarette, not quite within reach.

“So I won’t apologize, but I want you to know I don’t usually lose control like that. I try to be very, uh, professional.”

She laughed. “Are you saying that your superb marksmanship hasn’t gotten you laid before?”

“Nope, definitely not saying that.” He paused, cigarette hanging off of his lip. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Well, it has really gotten me into serious sh- … er, problems.”

“Really? How?”

“Those two Gunner doofuses, Winlock and Barnes,” he said, exhaling smoke.

“The guys at the Third Rail?”

“Yeah. So, they have a particular hard on for me. I was assigned to the unit they were in, pretty large camp moving in and around the Plaza. Apparently word spread pretty quickly about how good I was …”

“I’m sure you weren’t showing off or anything,” she quipped.

“Who, me?!” he laughed. “So that kind of, uh, _prowess_ is pretty valuable in a group like the Gunners. They throw more jobs at you, more caps, rank, whatever. It makes you pretty popular with, uh …”

Lana turned over on her side to look at him. “Are you saying that women, _Gunners_ , were throwing themselves at you?”

“Something like that,” he grinned. He was mostly grinning because Lana hadn’t bothered to zip up her suit yet, and with her laying on her side like that, he had a nice view of her curves. “I mean, they were all complete nut jobs, really got off on violence and crap, but it was kind of nice never needing to spend a night alone. It helped for a little while, being that distracted …” he looked up at the stars for a minute, then tossed his cigarette off of the roof. “Screw those people. They all need to be wiped off the planet.”

“So Winlock and Barnes are still jealous?”

“Oh, they hated every part of it. My sleeping with the women they were after was just the cherry on top. When I broke contract and left, they couldn’t volunteer to chase me down fast enough. I know Wes, the Captain, would probably still take me back, but those two … they’re violent creeps. They’ll use any excuse to slit my throat.”

He rubbed at his eyes, sighing. “I need to get them off my back, pay them off or something. They’ve been hounding me for months, making it a real pain for me to get work. Hancock throws me a bone now and then, but I can’t keep running from them.”

He was quiet for a moment. Lana tried to lighten the mood, running a hand down his arm. “You should use your power over violent women and sick Fahrenheit on them.”

“That psycho bi- are you kidding me?! She hates my guts,” he choked.

“Ehh, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t.”

“You’re saying she pisses me off as some sort of messed up way of flirting?”

“Didn’t you ever tease the little girls you had a crush on as a kid?”

“Hell no! I hated that crap then as much as I hate it now,” he fumed, sounding genuinely angry.

The plan worked. They both ended up laughing at his reaction.

“Man I was really ready to kick Fahrenheit in the … coot,” he snickered.

“You should let me do it. She would probably like it too much if it was you,” Lana smiled.

He went quiet again, the cogs in his brain turning. His face lit up. “Let’s do it.”

“Wha-?”

“You and me. Let’s go pay Winlock and Barnes and their little army a visit. They won’t even know what hit them,” he looked at her, hopefully.

She didn’t answer, just pursed her lips thoughtfully. It was getting hard to see her expression in the twilight, and it made him nervous.

“Hey, just … pull up the map on that bloated wrist watch of yours,” he said, motioning to her Pip Boy. She complied, the green light flooding over her for a moment, before she scooted closer to him and the light captured him too. They looked at the map together, and he pointed around while she moved the image. After a few directions, he tapped the screen. “Right there. Where the highways meet. I’ll make it easy for you. You want to help me out with this, we go there. You think this is a bad idea, we don’t, and I won’t bring it up again. You’re the boss. I’ll still follow you no matter what.”

He could see her expression now in the light of the Pip Boy. It was gentle, but cautious. “You help me set up a genny in the morning, and then we’ll head out.”

“Wow. Ok, yeah,” he said, surprised. Being able to rely on someone for help was not something he expected, not from anyone. He could count the people he knew like that on one hand. Finding that quality in Lana was more than he could hope for.

“No wait. Shooting lesson first, and then we go. Now let’s get inside, your skin feels cold.”

He helped her zip up and they made their way into the projector tower, tossing a dusty skeleton off of a mattress and settling down for the night. They shared a cold can of pork n’ beans, a warm beer, and a few languid kisses in the dark. She slept in his arms that night and he felt that peace again, closer than ever, breathing on him, holding him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey I’m back, playing Robin Hood. I steal from the canon, and give to the smut. With a side of angst. Ok lots of angst in this one.
> 
> Have some. Shhhh, have some.

Their trip to the Mass Pike Interchange was one of the best times of MacCready’s life, and one of the most painfully confusing.

During the day they made their way south, picking through abandoned buildings, keeping an eye out for feral dogs or worse, collecting as much junk as they could carry. She picked up every bottle of alcohol they could find, every weapon, regardless of it being shitty or not. MacCready didn’t get it, and he nagged her about carrying it all until they’d stopped into their first settlement.

Lana had been there before, some tiny farm with one wooden shack and a few settlers squatting in it. She’d helped them set up some defenses, a radio signal and a water pump. When they’d spotted her and MacCready coming up the road, they’d all stopped what they were doing to come and greet her. Some of them were new there, having picked up her radio signal, and were just hoping for a safe place to live. They’d heard about her, wanted to introduce themselves to her, ask how they could help. The older ones thanked her profusely, were proud to show her how the crops were coming, how the place had grown since she’d left. Lana pulled MacCready over and had him empty his pack along with hers. He’d almost spoken up, upset that they were dumping their valuable loot with these nobodies, but their expressions made him hold it back. Their tired, dirty faces lit up in smiles as she handed out the bottles of vodka, the cans of purified water, the guns. Lana even asked MacCready to give them a few pointers on using the laser rifles they’d found. Mac grumbled, but he did it. While he was busy, he saw her scramble onto the roof of the shack and start tinkering with a turret. The settlers happily informed him that she had put the turret up herself during her last visit. That it had saved their lives, turned away raiders and put down ferals who had wandered too close.

The farmers asked them to share a meal and stay the night, and offered them two mattresses in the shack. Lana had looked at Mac, letting him decide. He accepted the meal, but declined the mattresses, instead telling them they’d use a sleeping bag outside. Lana flushed a little, but Mac didn’t care that he’d made it obvious they were sleeping together. He’d planned on making it even more obvious during the night.

It didn’t go completely as planned. After dinner, they’d crawled into their sleeping bag together. It was as hot and frantic as the first time, their kissing desperate, hands traveling all over each others’ bodies. He’d gotten on top of her, his erection pressing into her through their clothes, and she was just as needy, pulling his hips down, wrapping her legs around him.

But when her hands moved to his belt, he freaked.

He saw Lucy in his head. Saw her helpless, needing him. Saw the fear in her eyes, heard her screams, as he ran away with their child in his arms.

Ran as monsters ripped his pregnant wife apart into a bloody mess.

He was choking, coughing. Lana was saying his name, her hands on either side of his face, telling him to look at her, look at her. When his eyes finally focused on her, his breath coming back to him, she asked him if he was okay.

He just put his face against her neck and apologized. He couldn’t tell her any of that, not then. He wasn’t even sure what was going on. It had never happened to him before, not during sex.

She didn’t push him to talk. Eventually, she pulled his face back to hers and kissed him tenderly. It was more than enough. They kissed for what seemed like hours and she let him touch her however he wanted, gently teasing her breasts, her neck, between her legs. In the end he got what he wanted once more, bringing her to a powerful orgasm, her moaning uncontrollably into his mouth, not giving a damn that the whole camp probably heard them.

When they went to clean and pack up early the next morning, several of the settlers gave them knowing looks, smiles. If Lana felt as sheepish as Mac did at that point, she didn’t show it. She smiled right back at them.

When they went to take their leave, the settlers shook both of their hands, welcomed them back any time, wished them a safe journey. It was a pretty strange experience for MacCready; mercs weren’t often welcomed anyplace the first time, let alone a second. He wouldn’t in a million years have stuck his neck out for strangers like this, people too weak to help themselves. And yet watching Lana do it without a second thought, without question … well, he didn’t know if he liked it. But he was respecting her strength, her determination, more and more.

The next day and night went pretty much the same. Scavenging, shooting, helping a random civilian, and then making camp just so that MacCready could completely screw up having sex with her.

They’d stumbled onto a trailer park that was completely infested with ferals. This time it made MacCready break into a cold sweat: half from having packs of starving, vicious horrors jump out at him, crawling out from under the trailers like radroaches, catching him off guard: and half from having his heart skip a beat every time they did the same to Lana.

She kept cool, as always, and her aim was continuing to improve with MacCready’s help. At this range, with the ferals running forward and closing the distances for them, she rarely missed her target. “Shoot the legs!” she ordered MacCready as she backed up, calmly firing low and leaving a trail of dismembered ferals in her wake. He did as he was told, blowing the knees off of several approaching from the other direction, covering her flank. It was the right tactic, fast, easy, with perfect execution between the two of them. When all that was left was a trailer park full of crippled, squealing ghouls, she picked up a baseball bat that was leaning against one of the trailers and methodically walked over to each ghoul, smashing their heads in one after another.

He didn’t think he could ever get tired of watching her work.

They couldn’t believe their luck when they broke into one of the trailers and found a full suit of power armor. They holed up in the trailer for the night, Lana tinkering with the suit, looking especially pleased (“Mac, those guys are _so fucked_ ”), while he laid back and smoked cigarettes on the couch.

He certainly had fucking on his mind. He wanted to fuck her, fuck her harder than anyone had ever been fucked. Harder than he’d fucked any of the Gunners, and they had always wanted it rough, violent, mean. Later they came close again, Lana sitting on his lap, legs around him, her hand shoved down his pants. In the end, he just couldn’t do it. He was terrified.

He stayed up that night, telling himself he was taking watch even though they didn’t seem to need it. He couldn’t rest, thinking about it, trying to make sense of it. It wasn’t that Lana reminded him of Lucy. They may have both been kind to him, attractive to him, but they weren’t anything alike. Poor, gentle Lucy, quiet and beautiful and kind to everyone, had always made him worry over her. Lucy the artist, who would sit down with a piece of wood or paper or an old cloth, only to stand up with something unimaginably transformed, something priceless. Lucy the doctor, who saved and mended lives, while behind her back MacCready broke them. She’d always been that one profoundly precious thing in the world he felt he needed to protect, to keep untainted. His balance.

That morning he’d watched Lana blow the faces off of two yao guai with her shotgun before he could catch up. Then she’d insisted he teach her how to butcher them for meat but wouldn’t let him make any of the cuts himself, getting herself covered in blood and guts before breakfast. So why was he feeling _worried_ about Lana?

Why was he sure that getting her pregnant was some kind of death sentence?

He knew there were precautions they could take, meds they could find, some type of condom, but they were rare. And _expensive_. Luxuries that no fucking wastelander could ever just come across through a trader, let alone afford. And there was the general taboo against it. The human race needed to keep surviving, needed families, children.

Children were supposed to be _precious_.

Try convincing a Little Lamplighter of that. The hypocrisy disgusted him.

And that was it, really. All of that conflict and guilt came bubbling up, revealing itself once more, battling in his head before he could push it down again, hide it. His wife had been pregnant again, and he’d abandoned her to die. He’d completely failed her. Failed himself. And now he was failing his son, the only thing of value he’d ever brought to this world. That’s what happens when you let a broken kid like him try to play house. The only reason he was still alive was because he was just as twisted and fucked up as the world was. How in the hell was he ever going to change for his son?

By morning, he’d decided that his crippling fear was justified for other reasons. Why the hell would Lana want to risk getting pregnant at all, and by him of all people? She had other responsibilities, other relationships. And she was still looking for her own son. The aches he felt when he thought about Lucy, the pain and the guilt, all of those things were years old for him. He thought he knew what Lana was feeling, her husband’s murder only months old from her perspective. He’d been there.

Never mind that he was elaborately imagining how she felt, a clear and poor excuse for his own shortcomings. But he needed it, needed a justification so badly, to not put himself through this pain all over again. And at the same time, to not have to reveal his horrible failing, his weakness, to the one person he was actually starting to look up to. Whose approval he, rather unwillingly, had to admit he sought.

When Lana woke and realized he’d been up all night, she looked concerned. He lied, chalking it up to being nervous about the fight ahead of them; they were close now, could reach the Interchange by late afternoon. She probably didn’t buy it, but she seemed to understand. She took his hand, kissed it, and didn’t mention it again.

That simple, almost loving, gesture made his gut twist so tightly that it hurt for an hour.

He wasn’t nervous at all. He certainly didn’t need to be. Lana was everything he’d hoped for in this situation; quick, efficient, merciless. Seeing her use the power armor just reinforced his impression that she was some kind of unstoppable killing machine.

Of course, for the entire journey to the Interchange he’d teased her mercilessly; how slow she was walking, the stupid tinny voice that came out of her helmet. She’d threatened to give him the worst wedgie of his life, but she was too slow to get anywhere remotely close to grabbing hold of him.

He’d had to eat his hat when they’d reached the guard post below the Interchange and, instead of their usual guerilla tactics, she’d moseyed right up to the four guards, letting their bullets pathetically plink off of the armor, and then blasted each of them with the shotgun from point blank range.

She kicked one of the bodies off of the flimsy little elevator that would take them up to the highway. “Do women or children get the right of way in these situations?” she teased him.

“I believe children get to hide behind the elderly wearing power armor,” he replied dryly. “After you.”

She’d gotten onto the elevator and was waiting for MacCready, but he hesitated. “There’s another way up,” he told her, pointing at a nearby onramp that was only partially collapsed. “I remember it. If we split up …”

“Do it,” she said, slamming the controls of the elevator with her big metal fist, not waiting for his response. “W-wait!! Augh, fu-!!,” he blustered. The elevator was slow, but he had to full on run to the ramp to get the timing right.

He was out of breath by the time he found a good position, down the road from where the Gunner defenses were set up. A few minutes more and it would have been really bad for Lana; she’d managed to get some amount of cover between two improvised shacks, but she was pinned there by an assaultron and the fire from at least ten other Gunners. The distraction worked perfectly; with all of the noise from the gunfire, the confusion, he was able to pick four of the furthest ones off before the rest of them realized he was there. By then Lana had smashed the assaultron’s face in with the butt of her gun and was pushing forward.

That’s when he spotted Winlock and Barnes. They were coming up from the far side of the highway with two more Gunners in tow, and Winlock was in power armor as well. His armor didn’t have a helmet; he could have taken out that complete moron right then and there, but an anger swelled up in MacCready, a need to let them know it was him, that he’d prevailed in the end and this was their rightful due.

He head-shotted the two Gunners they had flanking them, seconds apart. He watched Winlock’s expression change through the scope, twist in fury and recognition. He was always the smarter of the two. It wasn’t enough for MacCready. He got up and charged forward.

Barnes was engaging Lana now; she was mowing through the last few Gunners, and though the power armor was starting to look like a chewed up old fender, it was holding up against everything they had. But then MacCready caught sight of Barnes pulling a missile launcher from the body of a downed Gunner and he had to act. He was still 50 yards out and without a clean shot, everything but Barnes’ feet obstructed by a staircase and guard tower.  

He narrowed his eyes, darting the scope around. A dirty shot it is, then. He threw himself into the prone position and aimed at the concrete in front of Barnes, firing as fast as he could.

Enough of the bullets ricocheted and sprayed into Barnes, causing him to scream and fall forward onto the pavement. It gave MacCready the shot he needed. He spared Barnes the rest of his miserable life.

Winlock was foaming at the mouth now. “MacCready, you spineless piece of shit!! Show your fucking face!!”

MacCready obliged him. He stood up, moved out into the open. “Missed me, Winlock? You asked for this! You knew it was coming!!”

Winlock spotted him and began spraying shots with his laser rifle. He was so enraged that his aim was all over the place. He was careless.  

Lana fired the rocket launcher, hitting Winlock square in the back of his armor. It stumbled him, paused his barrage of shots just long enough for MacCready to move into place and take the shot. Blood exploded from his face, and the power armor leaned precariously for a moment before collapsing backward onto the ground.

The highway was eerily quiet now, the only noises coming from a few burning barrels and a smoking turret that Lana had destroyed. Lana tossed the launcher down and waited until MacCready had made his way over. He stood looking down at Winlock for a moment before spitting on his body. “Congrats you dumb bastard. You really showed me.”

“Agh, did you have to spit on the frame? Gross, now I can’t add it to my collection.” Lana’s voice was even more garbled and tinny than before, the helmet apparently damaged. He could feel her grinning in there, loving to ruin his tough-guy fantasy moment.

MacCready walked over to her, leaning up and knocking right on the visor of her helmet, speaking loudly and slowly like she couldn’t hear him. “COME ON GET OUT OF THAT GARBAGE CAN. YOU SOUND LIKE AN IDIOT.”

She opened up the suit, but not before flicking him in the chest with her armored fingers, which stung like a bitch.

Before she could even step backwards out of the suit, MacCready had his arms around her, lifting her out of the frame and hoisting her over his shoulder while she laughed hysterically. He carried her into the nearest shack and threw her onto the bed (probably Winlock’s, one last Fuck You that MacCready was happy to provide), looking down at her intensely while he tossed his hat and rifle to the floor.

She was biting her lip, waiting for him to make a move. “You’re insatiable.”

“Yes.” He unbuttoned and pulled off his jacket.

“You’re cruel.”

“Yes.” He crawled onto the bed, crawled over her.

Her eyes were dark, hooded, brown orbs wavering with desire. “I want you.”

“Yes.” He said it without any voice, just his lips moving against hers before devouring her mouth roughly.

 As soon as he moved a hand up, reaching to unzip her vault suit, she snatched it with both of hers. She twisted hard, locking his elbow, and flipped their positions faster than he could react. Now she was straddling him, staring him down, slinking over him.

“Not this time, kid,” she purred, roughly tugging his belt open, then his fly. By the time she pulled it out, his dick was solid as a rock and pulsing with need. He hadn’t a moment to process what was happening before her mouth was on him, kissing the tip, licking the underside of his shaft. When her mouth closed around him, her warm, wet tongue sliding back and forth, an unrestrained “ _Fuck!_ ” escaped him.

Looking down and seeing Lana’s face, Lana the one pleasuring him, giving him that sultry, heated look while his dick pumped in and out of her clever little mouth … he knew he wasn’t going to last long.

He tried to warn her, his hand in her hair, calling her name, pleading into her eyes. It only made her pick up speed, get louder, messier, dripping spit all over his groin. The noises, the warmth, the wetness, and the fact that he’d fantasized about this pretty much constantly in the past two weeks, was quickly too much. He groaned loudly, his fist gripping her hair tightly as he came into her mouth. She was moaning too, taking it all in, her hands squeezing his hips as they bucked.

He watched in complete, breathless disbelief as she swallowed it all, pulled herself slowly off of him and wiped her mouth, entirely unabashed. When she smiled, clearly not finished with him, he felt just a tad bit anxious of what was coming next.

The feeling disappeared as she straddled him once more, putting her knees on either side of his face, and then slowly unzipped her suit. The angle made her curves completely irresistible, and as she lowered herself onto his waiting lips, he brought his hands up to fondle her breasts.

She was so wet again, wet for him, and he couldn’t get enough of it. She tasted delicious, and he knew how to eat her out now, how hard and how fast to move his tongue, his lips, in order to get her hips rolling, her moans loud and tortured. He was doing it now and she was responding, grinding herself on his mouth, her hands gripping the metal bedframe. When her movements became frantic he pinched both of her nipples, hard, and she screamed, her whole body seizing up.

The orgasm was so strong that she paled, almost looking faint, and MacCready quickly sat up so he could grip her around the waist, hold her in his lap while she controlled her breathing, her forehead pressed to his.

He felt so much joy in that moment that he couldn’t believe he’d been so caught up about not putting his dick inside of her. He could spend the rest of his life with just this, just a memory of making this one amazing woman shake with pleasure, with ecstasy, in his arms and he’d be completely satisfied.

“I-I think … I’m addicted to you MacCready,” she whispered.

He pushed strands of sweat-soaked hair away from her eyes, beaming at her. “Well, no one said you were very smart.”

It was painful leaving that bed, but they knew they couldn’t stay. They both seemed sorry for it, looting the rest of the camp and packing up in near silence.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No smut in this and probably the following chapter or two. Pesky plot progression, but it'll be back soon! In the meantime, have some angst, followed by what I hope is some funny companion interaction. Thanks!

He had to tell her.

They’d been pushing their way north again, traveling past nightfall, MacCready walking behind her clunking form. The light from her helmet was thankfully still intact, and illuminated the road ahead of them. It’d been hours since they left the Interchange and they’d been practically silent the entire time. Lana knew something was up, he could tell she knew, and she still didn’t ask him, didn’t push him. This was becoming a pattern and he was getting pretty sick of himself.

It was stupid to wait any longer. He had to ask her.

She’d pushed to reach another settlement where she was known, this time some kind of farm run by a bunch of Mister Handys. She’d gotten out of her power armor and given him a tour, introducing him to a few of the units that had kooky personalities. He’d gotten a real kick out of it despite himself. He realized when he saw Lana smiling, watching him, that she’d known he would enjoy this place, and that was probably why she’d made them keep walking through the dark.

He would have preferred it if they were alone, but he supposed this was close. They were safe here and the place was even lit up, the Handys working around the clock.

It was too hectic and noisy to sleep inside the greenhouse, so they dragged a mattress outside and dropped it next to a fire pit Lana had made. Lana went to work setting up her hard-earned yao guai meat over the fire. MacCready just sat on the ground blankly, his back against the greenhouse. It was a nice night at least, warm and bright with moonlight. He could see the twisting black shape that was the Charles river in the near distance, silver light shimmering off of it’s curves and bends as it turned and snaked south.

When Lana was satisfied with her setup, she gave MacCready a good once over. Without saying a word, she wandered back into the greenhouse and then returned a moment later, offering him a bottle of moonshine. “Glad I stashed this when I was first here.” She sat next to him by the fire, close but still apart.

“Bobrov’s Best. You know this stuff will make you blind, just like that jackass Vadim’s face,” he said, pulling out a combat knife to dig out the cork. 

“You know them?”

“Yeah. Think I’m pretty much on a first name basis with every bartender for 500 miles.” 

She chuckled, but his face remained straight. “I might not be kidding,” he muttered, pulling the the cork the rest of the way out with his teeth and spitting it on the ground before taking a swig. 

She spoke softly. “You ready to talk?”

He snorted. “Worse than that. I have to ask for another favor.”

She leaned forward and put her hand on his thigh. “Mac … anything.” He lifted the hand off of his leg and placed the bottle into it. “Just, wait until I explain. Please,” he begged. “There’s … there’s a lot I haven’t told you.”

“I know.” She took a swig from the bottle.

He felt wretched about this. “I haven’t even properly thanked you for today,” he saw her holding back the smirk that was creeping up into her lips. “Don’t! Do not say it. Agh … just, here. Take this.” He put a bundle wrapped in a tied up old handkerchief into her other hand.

She squeezed it, the clinking sound making it clear it was full of caps. “Your fee?”

“Yes. I figure I can’t really repay you. The best I can do is not have caps between us. We still have a deal, just … not for money.”

She put the bundle down on the ground, keeping quiet, waiting until he was ready to continue.

“I told you I came from the Capital Wasteland. What I didn’t tell you was that I’d left a life behind there. I had a family. My wife Lucy, and our son Duncan.”

She looked genuinely shocked, lips parted against the light of the campfire, and it didn’t make it easier for him.

“My son. He’s sick. I, I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but he took a fever. And then there were these boils, blue boils popping up all over his body. Last time I saw him, when I left him on our farm, he could barely walk … I don’t know how much longer he’s going to live.” He went quiet for a moment.

She handed him back the moonshine. “And Lucy …?”

He didn’t respond. He took a long swig from the bottle and stared out into the darkness of the river.

She crouched in front of him, close, so that he couldn’t look past her. “What do you need me to do?”

He looked into her dark eyes, wondering how the hell he managed to have her in his life.

“There’s a research facility in Malden. I’d gotten the info from someone a few months before I met you. They wanted the cure for their friend; it sounded like they had the same symptoms as Duncan, the same boils. They’d died before they could get to the facility. I tried to break in myself and failed. Almost got killed in there, and I would have deserved it.” 

He looked into her eyes, pleading. “Look, I know I should have said something before. The Gunners … they were just the immediate problem. I guess I never imagined that I’d get this far. I thought I’d run out of rope and they’d catch me with my pants down, and it’d all be fu-, all be over, and I’d have failed my son like I …” He was sputtering, upset. “Anyway. I didn’t think I’d meet someone like you. And I know that I can trust you. I’ve never trusted anyone like I trust you. Thanks to you I won’t have to sleep with one eye open tonight.” 

She just smiled at him, pretty and patient. He pulled her down to sit next to him, hugging his arm around her. “Tell me about the Capital Wasteland,” she asked.

They spent the rest of the night curled up by the fire, talking, eating their feast of yao guai ribs, killing the bottle of moonshine, laughing when one of the Handys would come out and talk to them about some nonsense or other. Lana got a serious kick out of his stories about Little Lamplight, the stories about being mayor of a town full of children. She couldn’t get enough of them (“I _knew_ you were a little punk!”), asking about every detail of how they lived, teasing him mercilessly about eating cave fungus, calling him Mister Mayor for the rest of the night.

It turned bittersweet. He told her about Lucy, the good stuff, how she was the sweetest kid he’d ever met, the only real positive influence in his life. How she’d saved his life after a cave-in and he was smitten ever since. He told her about how he’d been so good with a rifle that he’d run merc jobs before he even left Lamplight; that as soon as was out, he could get work around the Capital, traveling as far up as the Commonwealth even back then. He’d take Lucy with him, kept her close and safe, but when she became pregnant he put the caps down for the farm. Eventually other aged-out Lamplighters, his friends (the smart ones at least), came looking for him too, looking for help. Two of them took over the farm when he left, a brother and a sister. They were the ones he’d entrusted Duncan to.

She asked about the cursing. He laughed at himself; he knew she’d call him on it eventually. He explained his promise to Duncan, how it came about. He and Lucy were traveling in the Capitol; Duncan was with them, about a year old. They were in some kind of dive, getting a bite to eat, when he’d gotten into a shouting match with some jerk. More accurately, MacCready was the one shouting; the other guy called him ignorant, real gutter trash, who couldn’t go two words without using the word fuck. It stuck with him, being lambasted like that in front of his wife and kid. Before he’d left, he’d sworn to Duncan that he was going to be a good man, someone he could look up to. Speaking like a mature adult was his first, and continuing, effort.

She thanked him for sharing it all. They didn’t fool around that night, didn’t even kiss. Just sat side by side, drifting to sleep by the firelight, only to both wake up in time for the sunrise. Something he’d said had changed her, and he didn’t know what.

\--- 

48 hours later, Lana was putting the vial of serum into his hand. It was difficult for him to believe. He’d taken her in his arms, lifted her, spun her around, and then kissed her; kissed her deep, and long, and full of all sorts of feelings he couldn’t quite articulate. But when he pulled away, her face was drawn. She’d been somber the entire time they were traveling; eager to help him, yes, and pleased when they’d succeeded. But underneath it all was a coldness he hadn’t felt from her before. 

He tried not to think about it until after they’d gone back to Daisy and given her the vial, securing its passage right to Duncan via Daisy’s caravan contacts. She was the only one he trusted to move the cure safely. He felt elated handing it to her, finally succeeding, finally giving his son the chance at life he deserved.

Daisy seemed happy to see them still together. She asked Lana to take care of MacCready. That he was one of the Good Ones.

“He is,” was Lana’s only response. She was making him nervous.

He led her outside into the Goodneighbor street. It was early evening, cold and blue. As soon as they faced each other, Lana’s arms were crossed and he knew this wasn’t going to end well.

“You saved my son, Lana. I thought you’d be happy for me,” he asked, putting his hands on her arms.

She exhaled, her posture changing. “I’m sorry. I am happy for you. I am.” She put her hand on his chest, absent-mindedly straightening his scarf before pulling her hand back quickly, crossing her arms again. “You should be the one taking that vial back to your son,” she blurted out.

He was stunned. “You want me to leave the Commonwealth? Leave you?”

“Mac! This isn’t about us. You have a son, a family, who _need_ you. You can’t possibly be thinking of staying here with me.”

“I just made that decision. Did you miss it?” 

“It’s _wrong_.” She looked at him sternly, judgmentally. 

“He’s been safer without me than he EVER was with me. Are you safer without me?”

“Don’t make this about me! You’re his father! He needs to be with you!”

“The way I needed a father? The way every kid in Little Lamplight needed a father? Don’t tell me how to raise my kid!”

There were tears pooling in her eyes. He’d never seen her upset like this, the first crack in the veneer. He could’ve admitted to feeling moved if he wasn’t so fucking angry.

“My son needs _me_ ,” she stammered. 

“Not anytime soon, apparently.”

He regretted the words instantly. This was bad. This was not what he wanted. “Lana, I …”

“You may as well go back to the Capitol, because we’re done here. This partnership is over.”

“I’m not going to do that. I’m not leaving knowing that you’re … you’re collecting _power armor_ to take on the _fucking Institute._ Maybe you don’t believe me, but I give a shit about whether you live long enough to save your son. I could never forgive myself if I walked away from you now, not after all that you’ve done for me. I won’t do it.” 

She wouldn’t look him in the eyes. Her own were glassy, darting back and forth. The tears were still pooled there at the edges, like she was holding them from falling by sheer will alone. But she seemed to be listening to him, to take it in. 

“I don’t want you to leave either,” she sighed. He tried to pull her in, to kiss her, but she pushed him back, holding him at arms length by the front of his jacket. “But you’re right. I’m … distracted by you. Maybe I’m not thinking straight. I don’t regret anything I’ve done for you, I would never regret that. But I think I need to decide my next steps alone.”

He sighed, pulling one curl of her hair between his fingers and then letting go. “Tell me where to go.” 

“Wait for me in Sanctuary Hills.” 

And so he packed himself up, heading off alone to a town he’d never fucking heard of. When he’d separated from Lana he’d turned back to get one last look, and saw her walking up the steps to the State House. To Hancock’s place. It was just one last little twist of the knife that he really didn’t need to think about.


	8. Chapter 8

He crossed the bridge into Sanctuary Hills two mornings later. The trip itself had been fairly uneventful; funny how one person _that wasn’t Lana_ could avoid getting into just about any kind of trouble that was waiting in the wastes. It’d felt strange to be traveling alone again, quiet and cold, with way too much time to think about the stupid shit he’d said. He’d been beating himself up about it since he’d left her, that he hadn’t even taken the time to really express his gratitude. To explain why he couldn’t bring himself to penetrate her during sex. To share his growing, tumbling, out-of-control feelings. All of it just churned in his mind over and over until he was a self-loathing mess.

Standing in front of the big wooden sign reading ‘Sanctuary Hills’ made him realize he had an entirely new set of problems.

Lana wasn’t really the woman he’d thought she was. As deeply as he already admired her, he still hadn’t given her enough credit.

Sanctuary Hills was busy, sprawling, intimidating. There was clearly a tidy old neighborhood under there, a bunch of plots and houses lining a street and in a round. But the whole thing was covered by fortified walls, guard posts with armed guards, series of turrets and generators. He spotted water purifiers in the river by the bridge, and on the bridge itself was a steady flow of traffic to and from the town, provisioners with their pack animals, trader caravans with guards, gangs of Minutemen, and just _people_. He’d been positive that he was going to show up to a ghost town, a few sad squatters or some radroaches to keep him company. This was intense. And Lana had started this, built this up in a span of a couple months.

He realized all at once that she wasn’t just looking to take the Institute on with a couple of power armor suits. She was building a network in the Commonwealth, _an army_.

He walked down the street, taking everything in; the backyard of every house had been turned into plots of farm. People had set up trading stalls all along the street; some were larger, tents for traveling caravans and their brahmin. Others were just makeshift wooden fronts to advertise goods and services. There were people working everywhere, fixing rooftops, tilling soil, carrying materials and supplies to god knows where. And there were also people just sitting down, having a smoke, talking to one another. Where the hell did they all come from?

He thought he knew when he’d reached the right place. In the old driveway of one house was a set of workstations. Lined up neatly were three power armor frames of varying completion.

He was standing there dumbly with his pack over his shoulder, casually wondering where Lana was going to park that fourth suit of power armor, when something came up next to him.

It was a Mister Handy. “You must be Mr. MacCready! Sir, may I say it is a pleasure to welcome you to Sanctuary Hills! I am Codsworth, and I am most proud to inform you that I’ve been the mistress’ butler for the last 210 years! Is the mistress with you now, sir?”

“The what? You mean Lana? Uhh no, Lana’s not with me. How did you know my name?”

“Oh I’ve heard so much about you, sir! A true pleasure to finally meet you. I have a room all set up and waiting just for you. We’re quite full up these days, but not to worry. I put you as close to the mistress as possible! Please, do follow me,” the Handy prattled on, before jetting off down the street.

“What the f…” MacCready was dumbfounded, but he certainly had nothing better to do. He followed the Handy, weaving between people walking through the town. God help him, he thought he saw a super mutant when he passed between two houses. He ended up at a house just two doors down. Like the other ones in town, the outer walls were pretty beat up, windows blown out, with scraps of sheet metal or cork board nailed haphazardly over gaps in the siding. But the roof was thoroughly patched and the place cleaned up, even furnished.

The Handy was squeezing down the hallway, still prattling. “Oh this way sir, this room here! I’m afraid you’ll be sharing the house of course, but as the director of household services in Sanctuary Hills, I’ve taken it upon myself to leave the most spacious and comfortable quarters for only mistress Lana’s most special companions!”

MacCready thought he was losing his damn mind. “Most special _what_?”

The Handy floated aside and pointed one of his long appendages into a doorway. “Here you are, sir! I hope this will be to your satisfaction?” 

MacCready looked in briefly, throwing his bag onto the clean, plainly dressed bed. He had a window at least, and a little side table, but noticeably no door. “Yeah, yeah. It’s fine.” 

“Mr. MacCready, will mum be joining us soon? I was so looking forward to it, we haven’t seen her in weeks!”

“Uh, yeah, she’ll be here in a few days. Did you say ‘mum’?”

“Oh splendid! Oh I do have so many things to prepare for her arrival. Ah, please do make yourself comfortable and see me any time you require something! And I believe Miss Piper will be an excellent roommate and will be happy to hear of Ms. Lana’s impending arrival!” 

The Handy was zipping down the hall before it registered with MacCready. “Miss Pipe-? Ah HEY! CODSWALLOP! CAN I CHANGE MY ROOM?” He yelled after it.

“Ahem.”

Of course. “Piper, is it?”

She was leaning against the doorframe of the opposite room in the hallway. “Yes, it is. _Roomie_. Wasn’t sure if I’d be seeing you again.” He read that uppity tone in her voice, just like the first time they’d met at The Third Rail. Guess she still wasn’t too happy about being dismissed from Lana’s good company. He could sympathize now.

He pushed his bag to the floor and flopped backward onto his tiny new bed. “What, thought I’d skip town with the caps?”

Piper went ahead and moved to lean on his doorframe instead. “Mmm more like, thought the Gunners would have made good on their threat to put you out of business permanently.”

“Yeah, well. They’re not much good on their word, are they?”

“Heard there’s a few less words to throw around after they lost a whole waystation. Where was it? The Mass Pike Interchange? You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to your little friends down there, would you?” 

He pulled his hat down onto his face and groaned the word _reporter_ into it. Then he tilted the hat up. “That tin can knew my name. What did you tell him about me that made him feel the need to punish me like this?”

“I told him your name, and your little history with the Gunners. Everything else must have been your exemplary performance preceding you.”

“My _what_?”

A smoking hot red-head suddenly appeared next to Piper. “Is this the rat-faced turd who’s been hammering Lana all across the Commonwealth?" 

He didn’t have time to enjoy her Irish accent while the two of them were laughing, gossiping right to his face, and blocking his door-less entryway.

He’d made it halfway out of the window before they’d pulled him back inside.

\---

He should have left the Commonwealth when he had the chance. If he had known Lana had sentenced him to Sanctuary Hills for this unrelenting torture, he would have packed up and skipped town out of Goodneighbor, honor debts be damned.

Turned out that their little escapade in the sleeping bag had made a serious impression on the settlers there. Lana was like a damned celebrity. The farmers, traders, Minutemen in their stupid little hats; they were all Lana-junkies, constantly talking about her, following what she was doing. MacCready would never have been so indiscreet if he had known half the Commonwealth was going to be talking about his sex life.

Even worse, everyone knew him by sight now, like it was obvious as soon as he walked into town that he was the “handsome young mercenary” (or “sweet baby mole rat” as Cait had taken to calling him) that they’d been eagerly waiting to see.

If Lana hadn’t dumped him, if she’d walked over that bridge into town with him, he thought he could have at least felt proud about the whole thing. Instead he spent a lot of time at the improvised bar, being smelly and belligerent and completely unpleasant to the people who came to interrogate him, starting a whole new set of rumors for the town to gossip about. 

Though they continued to tease him mercilessly, Piper and Cait almost seemed to take pity on him once they saw what a mess he was. Piper woke him up bright and early in the morning to help maintain their backyard plot of crops, while Cait kept him up late by joining him at the bar every night.

They took turns every other day trying to convince him to bathe. He did everything in his power to avoid it just to spite them, until one night Cait dumped a bucket of cold river water over him at the bar. He made the mistake of engaging her when she pushed him to fight her over it, and she proceeded to beat the snot out of him in front of everyone else in town. Piper broke them up, but only reprimanded MacCready, for “getting Cait all excited.”

It was a rough routine, but he supposed it was better than being left to his own self-destructive devices.

They introduced him to the rest of Lana’s “special companions,” as Codsworth kept referring to them as. He finally had a chance to meet the infamous Nick Valentine. It was apparently a long standing routine for him to come to Piper’s house and make her dinner, something she would often forget to do (or else do very poorly). Sometimes he’d be at the bar, just to listen to people’s stories, keep his finger on the pulse. He told the best stories, and Mac would occasionally ask him about before the war. About Lana’s world.

Piper and Cait also let MacCready join in on their little game of teasing Nick; or rather, their determination to tease Nick. But Nick was bulletproof, always cool, always having a response ready.

A week of this, and Mac started to believe that maybe he could fit in here. 

Not everyone was a fan of his, though. Some stick-in-the-ass Minuteman named Garvey showed up a few days in. He gave MacCready a once over when they met and seemed to hate him on sight. He didn’t know what the hell he did to make the guy instantly surly, but it was mutual for MacCready. Garvey would walk up and down the town at all times of day with a gaggle of silly hats following him, barking orders and taking inventory. When he showed up at the bar in the evening, it was to have one weak drink and stand around with his back board-straight before calling it an early night.

Then there were the ones that just confused him completely. One was a French girl, or what he thought was a French girl, who spouted scientific garbage at him incessantly. She was easy on the eyes, but all he could do was say “ _What?”_ whenever she spoke, and so he just began avoiding her when possible. Nick explained later that Lana had helped her become a synth from a Miss Nanny robot. “Oh sure,” he’d said. “That all makes perfect sense.”

And there really was a super mutant, some freak show named Strong, walking around the town and scaring the crap out of people. He didn’t seem to interact with others much; he had a shack somewhere at the far edge of town and only appeared occasionally, asking if anyone had seen Lana, threatening to smash Codsworth into little pieces.

One morning, they’d found a bunch of dripping, stinking bags of crushed mirelurk chunks hanging from the tree in the center of town. Codsworth had made like he was going to tell Strong off, and Piper had to run after him and tell him she’d handle it. She asked MacCready to go with her.

When they’d gotten to Strong’s hut, he was outside butchering even more mirelurk carcasses with a machete, tossing the chunks into little net bags he must have fashioned himself. Piper managed to get him to explain; that more and more mirelurks were starting to wander near the town from somewhere up the stream. Strong had been killing them and eating the meat, but now there were so many that he had too much; he’d strung up the extra in town for the “weak humans to eat and get strong.”

Piper thanked him, sort of, but between her and MacCready, they’d realized there must be a big nest somewhere nearby.

God help him, MacCready agreed to wipe it out with the help of a super mutant.

They’d gone out the next afternoon, and it was as easy as pie. With Strong taking point, drawing all of the attention of the lurks, all Mac had to do was hang back and pick them off. It got to be such a ridiculous massacre that MacCready would mess with Strong, taking out lurks that he was just about to crush with a super sledge. Strong would scream insults, only to take out that rage on the next luckless mirelurk while MacCready laughed his ass off.

Strong apparently didn’t hold a grudge. When all of the lurks seemed to be dispatched, he slapped MacCready across the back, almost knocking him over, and commended him on his excellent killing skills. They collected the eggs in a bunch of net bags and returned to town.

It was the weirdest week of his life.

And it was a week and counting, with still no Lana. His days were filled now, at least. He really did put his back into farming, and not just because Piper made him. It brought back old memories, being at home, yes, he had a _home_ , and maybe he’d never been all that much of a farmer, but he had always taken pride in what was his, had kept everything growing. It had surprised Piper, had surprised everyone really, seeing a side of him that no one expected.

But his nights were still drowning in alcohol.

One night, he was sitting on the curb, right in front of the little line of power armor suits, drinking an entire bottle of wine by himself. He couldn’t tell if it was fancy shit or swill, but he’d stolen it out of a crate behind the bar and it was doing the job.

A dog came up to him. Just padded right up to him from out of nowhere and sat right in front of him, staring expectantly.

“Hey dummy,” Mac reached out and gave the dog a good scratch on the neck. The dog jumped forward and licked him, slobbering all over his face, paws on his chest. MacCready had to put the bottle down so he could properly wrestle.

“I see you’ve met my pal, Dogmeat.” Nick sidled up, smiling at the tangle of Mac and Dog.

“Cute friend. Who does he belong to?” Mac asked between slobbers.

 “He’s his own man, you can say. But if he belonged to anyone here, it’d be Lana.”

“Why do I even bother asking,” MacCready muttered, tugging at the dog’s ears, ruffling his scruff. Dogmeat couldn’t get enough.

“You’re in Lana City now, my friend. Everyone here is trying pretty hard to get a little of her time,” Nick chuckled.

“Yeah, some more than others. Hey, Garvey! Nice night for a stupid hat convention!”

Garvey was walking past with a patrol of Minutemen. He threw MacCready a dirty look. “Making yourself useful, as usual MacCready. Hope you paid for that bottle this time. We punish crimes here, no matter who that person thinks they are to the General.”

“Ouch. He’s a big fan,” Mac informed Nick.

Nick let out an exasperated laugh. “ _Behave_ ,” he growled, turning to walk down the street.

“Me or the dog?” 

“That’s the difference, MacCready,” Nick called over his shoulder. “I never need to tell the dog." 

He looked back down at the dog. “You think their hats are stupid too, right?”

The dog was excited, his whole body shaking with his wagging tail. It barked at him, once, standing up. Then it ran across the street, looked back and barked once more, before running inside the house directly opposite to where MacCready sat.

Mac got up and followed Dogmeat, taking the bottle with him. He’d never seen anyone go into this house besides Codsworth, even though there wasn’t a front door to keep people out. Electrical wiring ran along the ceiling, but nothing was turned on. He could see the living room, the kitchen. Everything was super clean, neat, a bunch of old world appliances and knick knacks. The house itself was falling apart, but inside everything was perfectly ordered and maintained. Right next to him was a shelf with memorabilia, a neatly folded American flag in a wooden display, a plaque of some sort, a diploma. It was too dark for him to read the words.

Before he could step closer and take a better look, he heard a bark from one of the rooms. He felt his way down a hallway, peaking his head into the small rooms. And then he saw something that made him stop, frozen in the doorway. A nursery.

This was Lana’s old house. Wasn’t it? No, it couldn’t be. But the more that he stared at the crib, the broken rocket ship mobile hanging over it, the more he felt certain. He took a long swig from the wine. He felt like he was invading, committing some kind of terrible crime by looking into her past this way. Looking into her pain.

Another bark broke his reverie. He begrudgingly left the doorway to look into the last room. It was a bedroom. The corner room had two pane-less windows and a wide, comfy looking bed, with clean sheets and pillows. There were bedside tables, a bureau and a desk. Dogmeat had his nose up to the desk, eyes looking at MacCready with excitement.

MacCready walked over and spotted the row of Vault Tec bobbleheads, lined up neatly in front of Dogmeat’s nose. He knocked one of them on the head and watched it wiggle, to which Dogmeat barked. “You like these, huh?” Mac laughed. 

Then he did a double take. He scrambled for the switch of a nearby lamp, and then his mouth dropped in disbelief.

Behind the bobbleheads was a stack of comics. He picked them up one at a time, reverently, examining the covers in the lamp light. Grognak, Unstoppables, Astoundingly Awesome Tales; all of his childhood favorites, and a good number of issues he’d never seen before. 

He took the stack and sat on the floor, his back against the bed; no point in getting the nice looking sheets dirty. He sat there reading Lana’s comics, killing his bottle of wine, feeling like she was close again, reading over his shoulder, smirking. With Dogmeat curled up at his side, he sat there until he passed out, huddled in nostalgia, at some point in the night.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bah, sorry for the delay; school is killing me. This is actually the first chunk of a longer chapter, so the chapter # will probably increase going forward. No smut for a bit. Soon, and thanks for reading!

MacCready was woken by a crash and hushed voices coming from the living room. Dogmeat was no longer next to him. His first instinct was to grab his gun, but of course, he’d left it in his room. This place had made him sloppy, complacent; he wouldn’t walk around without it again. He looked around desperately; by blind luck, there was a baseball bat leaning behind the bed frame.

MacCready was tip-toeing down the hall, bat raised, when he recognized the voices.

“Shit. Sorry about the vase.” Hancock.

Lana snorting. “Don’t worry.” She sounded strange, short winded.

MacCready came around the corner, really not sure of what he was about to see. What he did see was probably the furthest thing in his mind.

There was blood all over the place. Lana was sitting on the kitchen table. She had one arm wrapped around her belly, and the other holding a blood-soaked cloth over one side of her face. She spotted him. “Mac …”

MacCready took three short steps and grabbed Hancock by his stupid frilly collar. “What the FUCK did you do?” The bat was still gripped tightly in his other hand.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hands off of the threads, MacCready.” Hancock was completely calm, composed … but with a very dangerous glint in his eyes. “Besides, I wasn’t there for … whatever the hell this is. She wouldn’t tell me. You gonna explain, love, or do you just wanna enjoy the show?” he asked Lana.

“He ... he wasn’t there, Mac. Please,” she was really short of breath. Mac dropped Hancock and the bat, moving to Lana’s side, trying to inspect her wounds. She shook him off when he pulled at her hands, clasping them tightly to herself. “Lana are you all right? What the hell happened?”

“I’m fine … I was, I was with …”

“She was with me,” came a voice from outside the doorway. Mac looked over to see some hulking stiff in power armor.

“Yeah, so who’s that creep?” asked Hancock. At least _he_ was making sense.

The white emblem on the metal chest-piece and the constipated expression made it clear to MacCready. And he was enraged. He turned back to Lana. “You got involved with the Brotherhood? No wonder you’re a complete mess. What were you thinking?!”

Lana couldn’t even respond. She looked up at him, face sweaty, expression unreadable.

Power Armor had started spouting off about it being “an unfortunate incident occurring during a sensitive Brotherhood operation,” when Codsworth appeared and nearly shoved him out of the way. “Mum, you’re injured! _And there is blood everywhere!_ ”

The Handy was actually going to try to clean up the mess (“Who broke this vase? _Why it is 212 years old!!”)_ when, thankfully, Curie showed up to treat Lana’s wounds, shooing everyone else out of the house. MacCready tried to stay, but Lana just shook her head.

Codsworth immediately took off, crying about how difficult blood stains were to get out once they were absorbed. The rest of them just stood dumbly on the street, looking at each other. Mac supposed he should have asked this guy, this Brotherhood dork, about what had happened, but he didn’t want to talk to him. Apparently Hancock didn’t either, because he took MacCready by the arm and walked him in the other direction. “Why don’t you show me around a little, brother. Let’s catch up.”

\--

MacCready’s tour only had one stop; the bar. There were always several people there no matter the hour of night, usually a few traders or provisioners, people who kept odd hours. He threw a bunch of caps on the counter and asked for a whole bottle of anything.

“Mac, you sure about this?” Hancock asked. “You look like complete shit.”

The bartender, some new guy he’d seen around the last few nights, slammed a bottle of rum on the counter. MacCready didn’t even wait for glasses, opening up the bottle and taking a swig. Hancock just shook his head, muttering, “Man, at least take some Mentats with that …”

“He’s right, you know. Might want to lay off the sauce for a bit, you’re looking kind of peaky.” the bartender cheerfully chimed in.

MacCready was ready to murder this guy. “Why are you wearing sunglasses at night?”

“Oh man, I have this terrible deformity on my corneas. They’re shaped like little lemons, really makes people uncomfortable …” The bartender was making ridiculous lemon-shaped gestures with his hands.

MacCready rudely ignored him, turning to Hancock. “Please tell me what the hell happened. I know that she went to you in Goodneighbor. How the heck did she end up with the Brotherhood?”

Hancock peeled the bottle out of MacCready’s grip, taking a swig. “Yeah, sure she came to see me. We were on the road for a bit, but then we crossed paths with those military bozos. She told me to hit the pavement and that’s what I did. I was moseying my way down here when I saw the crash.”

“Crash? What crash?”

Piper and Nick came up behind them, Piper wrapped up in a blanket over what Mac recognized were her pajamas. Her concerned expression quickly changed when she realized who she was talking to. “Ah hah. Well if it isn’t my second least favorite Mayor in the Commonwealth.”

“Well hey now …”

Mac was impatient. “ _What crash?_ ”

Hancock pointed the bottle southward. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

He walked them down to the bridge leading into Sanctuary Hills, and then pointed again into the night sky. “There look. See that?”

It would have been difficult to notice if Hancock hadn’t shown them, Sanctuary being so much brighter than the outlying area. But there it was, a small, bright orange light somewhere south of the Red Rocket station. “A fire?” Piper asked.

“Well yeah, that’s where they crashed the vertibird. I was on the road just north of there, saw the damn thing just spin out of the sky. She must have been caught up with it when it fell, because when I got there, her power armor was all crushed up like a tin can.”

“Hey, MacCready!”

He’d already turned around, making his way down the road back to Lana’s house. He wasn’t going to walk away this time, just because she’d told him to.

He hadn’t been gone long; Curie was leaning over, working on Lana as she laid flat on the table. He’d plodded back there with the intention of confronting her, chastising her for cooperating with the Brotherhood, for letting herself get taken in by them. For dumping him, leaving him here for nearly two weeks, and showing up like this. But then he saw her laying there, eyes closed and brow furrowed, sweaty and pallid, her breathing labored. The anger in him felt distant. He felt more like an idiot for not realizing she was this hurt.

“Ah, Monsieur MacCready, please …” Curie started, trying not to be distracted as she was stitching up a deep wound in Lana’s side. There was a bloody piece of shrapnel on the table that Curie must have pulled out of it.

“I won’t get in your way,” he assured her, his voice low. Lana opened her eyes at the sound of him. She was still holding the bloody cloth up to her cheek. This time when he put his hand over hers, she let him pull the rag away. She had a huge gash running the length of her cheek. Blood was still oozing out of it.

MacCready quietly took some of the supplies Curie had laid out and went about cleaning the wound. His touch was gentle, one hand pressing a clean cloth to the wound, the other pushing her hair behind her ear, running softly across her cheek. Her breathing seemed to slow, heavy eyes watching him.

She smiled up at him. “Mac … you look like shit.”

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling back. “You’re the most ridiculous person I know. You know that?”

“Are you … sure? Have you … met my friends?”

After Curie stitched up Lana’s cheek, she left them with a tray full of various chems to keep Lana comfortable.

Lana insisted she could walk, but MacCready didn’t give her the chance, picking her up in his arms and taking her to the bedroom. She spotted the pile of comics on the floor as he was putting her into the bed. “You’re cute.”

“You’re stupid,” he responded.

She gripped his hand, pulling him down to sit next to her. “Mac … I’m sorry.”

“For not staying with someone who could actually keep you safe? You should be.”

“For more than that.” She was breathing softly now, the meds making her drowsy. “I … I need to tell you …”

She was whispering now. He ran his hand against her forehead. “Hey, just rest now. We can talk later, I promise.”

“No, no … I’m not … working with the Brotherhood.”

MacCready’s eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I’m working with the Railroad.”

He groaned. “Great. That’s makes me feel so much better. You have a death wish?”

“I need Paladin Danse to keep believing that I’m with the Brotherhood …”

“Paladin … Danse …” he deadpanned. “Lana, you sure you aren’t in over your head here? All of these guys, the Railroad, the Brotherhood … they’re ticking time bombs. I’m worried that you’re trying to instigate a war here.”

Lana squeezed his hand. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. It was going to happen anyway. But I can control the outcome. I can end this. I know it. And I have this feeling … like I’m the _only_ one who can. I _have_ to. Otherwise, what am I really going to give my son? If he’s alive, or if …”

“Hey, don’t say sh-stuff like that.”

“No. I’ve thought about this a lot, Mac. Whatever happened to my son, this is the best thing that I can do for him. Make this world just a little bit less dangerous. If I’m lucky, he’ll have the chance to see it.”

Mac was quiet for a moment, admiring the passion in Lana’s eyes, in her voice, somehow present even after all of the sedatives. “You’re really good to the people you love,” he said softly.

That seemed to halt her. She didn’t speak, just stared up at his eyes, his face, the wheels in her head clearly turning. It should have been his warning, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He ran his fingers softly along the clean bandage across her cheek. “You’re going to have a wicked scar. As if you weren’t intimidating enough,” he said.

And then he leaned down, slowly, and pressed his lips into hers. He could feel her still staring up at him, her lips rigid at first, but the kisses were pouring out him. He was soft, slow, careful not to jar her injuries. “God, I missed you,” he whispered against her mouth. And then her lips parted and she sighed into him, one hand coming up to grab his hair, pulling him into her.

But almost as soon as she yielded to him, she went rigid again, and pulled his head away by his hair. Her eyes were glossy, her face pinched.

“This is what I meant about distraction,” she said, her voice quavering.

He was crestfallen.

“Mac, I need you to be patient with me. I need _you_. There are things I’m going to have to ask of you that I can’t ask from anyone else. But until this is done, I can’t … I can’t be vulnerable.”

“What could I possibly do?” he asked, dejected. “I can’t even control myself around you.”

“I’ll need you with me when I take down the Institute.”

That certainly surprised him. “Why me? Why not Paladin Dense out there?”

“You’re right, you know. I don’t work with anyone else as well as I do with you. You don’t question me in a conflict, you don’t back down. And you kept me safe. Besides … you’re the only person alive who’s seen me be vulnerable. We’re going to keep it that way.”

That at least fed his ego a bit.

“You know I’ll do whatever you ask of me.”

“Then be ready for a difficult fight,” she said. “Mentally and physically. You need to stop drinking.”

Ouch. “That obvious, huh?”

She sighed. “Deacon told me.”

“Who the heck is Deacon?”

She tried to explain, but it didn’t quite make sense. Despite fighting it, the sedatives pushed her to sleep. Mac resisted the urge to lay right there on the floor and sleep near her; surely taking the couch in the living room was acceptably “professional.” He made one trip first; getting his rifle, keeping it at his side where it belonged. When he returned, Codsworth was back, making a racket, complaining as he cleaned up the blood stains and pieces of broken vase.

Mac didn’t even care. Almost as soon as he hit the couch, he passed out.

\--

He was shaken awake at some point. It couldn’t be morning; it was still dark, and he was completely groggy. It was incredibly quiet though, about as quiet as he’d ever heard Sanctuary Hills.

Lana was leaning over him in the dark.

He sat up, concerned. “Hey, you shouldn’t be out of bed yet …”

“I’m fine,” she assured him. “Curie really did a number on me.” She patted her cheek; she’d removed the bandage, and although MacCready couldn’t see the damage in the dark, her voice and her posture seemed normal again.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I need to ask for your help. It’s one of the things I mentioned,” she said. “Something I can only ask you.”

He was alert at once, strapping on his rifle. “Let’s go.”

Lana led the way. She left out of the side door and took a path behind the house, sliding between broken slats of the backyard fence. MacCready followed her, wondering at the secrecy.

The moon was full and bright, illuminating their way enough that they didn’t need to rely on Lana’s Pip Boy. They crossed a bridge that loomed over a stream. Lana was limping a bit, still slowed by her injury, but she didn’t miss a step, her intent unwavering. She led him up a winding hill.

He started to feel really weird when they hit a tall fence and right beside it was a huge billboard for Vault Tec. Lana walked past it without so much as a look.

At the top of the hill, she stepped up onto a broad circular platform. When MacCready climbed up as well, he was met with an incredible view. The platform stood on a cliff that not only overlooked the entirety of Sanctuary Hills, little lit houses twinkling below them, but a view that extended to Boston and the surrounding areas. The sky was just dark enough that the green aurora of the Glowing Sea was clearly visible.

She pointed out in the direction of the aurora. “We watched the bomb hit from there as we were waiting for this platform to lower. The blast wave nearly took us out.”

MacCready took the vista in a whole different light. “Jesus … Lana, what are we going to find down here?”

She didn’t respond, only moved to the jutting control panel, where she pulled something from her Pip Boy and connected it. The interface came to life, and after she hit a button, the platform shuddered and began descending, swallowing them in darkness.

The place was a tomb, cold and silent aside from the deep rumble of electricity, the buzz of sickly florescent lights. Lana moved through it wordlessly. Everywhere they walked, MacCready saw the skeletons, felt the ghosts of the past. People were killed in here, people were deceived. This was the Vault Tec he was familiar with, shadowy and twisted and filled with fatal false hope. They passed room after room full of nothing but pods, larger than a person standing, and MacCready felt ill. So many frightened, innocent people, frozen like Lana. Gone now.

Lana led them into one of the rooms filled with monstrous pods. Their footsteps made flat, tiny splashes into shallow puddles that lined the floor. Each pod that he passed had a frosted window. MacCready’s mouth opened when he realized there were faces in there; bodies still preserved in their tombs.

She stopped in front of a pod, silently looking into the window. He hesitated to approach any closer, but when he took one step forward, he saw a small spray of marks at the foot of the pod. Old blood stains.

“H-hey we … I … I’ll leave you alone,” he muttered out. Before he had the chance to turn around and leave the room, Lana leaned forward and pulled the red override lever next to the pod. Chunks of ice hit the floor as the front skittered forward and then raised up. Lana and MacCready were met with a warm blast of steam that flooded out of the machine. Mac was horrified as he watched the blue, icy corpse of Lana’s husband appeared out of the clouds. He waited helplessly as she reached forward and grabbed at one of his hands, pulling at something. She was pulling and pulling, and then a strangled cry escaped her, and MacCready watched as she collapsed to her knees and began sobbing uncontrollably.

And he finally saw it; not just a crack in the veneer this time, but a complete shattering of that smooth outer shell. MacCready felt like he was looking at a stranger.

He fell next to her, his knees splashing in the cold puddle of water. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him. Her face buried into his scarf and he held her there, one hand at the back of her head, and just let her cry.

He lost track of how long they knelt there. At some point he felt her go limp in his arms, and he knew it was time to go. He lifted her, stood her up, told her to wait outside of the room. She limped away.

When he looked at the corpse, _Nate_ , he remembered, he realized what she’d been trying to do. On his hand was a gold wedding band, just like the one she always wore. Mac looked to make sure that Lana was outside of the room. Then he sighed and reached for the ring. He had to break the finger to get the ring off of the stiffened body. He’d done some morbid shit in his life, but this probably took the cake.

When he was done, he flipped the lever on the pod’s controls and entombed her husband’s body once again. He left the room, but she was no longer in sight. He panicked for a moment before hearing a clanking of metal somewhere nearby. He retraced her steps, only to find her pulling a bizarre looking gun out of a wall display case. She looked back at him, eyes still red and puffy. “If anyone asks,” she muttered out. The darkness that hid them again as they ascended the platform felt comforting somehow.

They sat outside on the edge of the vault platform and watched the sun rise over the Commonwealth. Lana was turning the ring over and over in her hands, the tiny clink of metal sounding every time it collided with her matching band.

He didn’t ask, but as the sky blossomed into reds and oranges and pinks, she offered an explanation, her voice met with puffs of cloud in the cold air.

“I’ll be leaving again soon. Deacon and his friends think they can get me inside the Institute. I … I don’t know what will happen to me once I’m there, but I intend to give this to Shaun,” she closed her palm over the ring. “He needs to know what happened to his father.”

“Take me with you,” Mac begged, again.

Lana closed her eyes. “Not this time. Not yet. This time I’m really going alone. When I get back …”

“…If you get back,” Mac muttered.

Lana looked at his angry expression. “If I get back,” she corrected, sorrowfully. “If I get back, then I’ll come looking for you. You can help me end this, one way or another.”

He knew she didn’t want him dumping his feelings out anymore, but upset as he was, he couldn’t resist running his fingers under the raw, red scar now marring her beautiful cheek. It was angry, irritated by her crying.

He pulled his hand back before she could say anything and reached into the pouch at his belt. It was still there, as it always was. He hadn’t looked at it in so long. He pulled out a bundle wrapped in a faded green bandana, untied it, and held it out to Lana. She looked down at it, confused, before picking it up and turning it around in her hands.

“Did you make this?” she asked, her thumbs feeling over the smooth curves of the little wooden soldier’s hat, it’s painted face, it’s rifle.

“Do I look like the artistic type to you? No. Lucy made it.” He paused for a moment. “I told her I was a soldier, and she gave this to me. Could never tell her the truth. That I’m just a hired killer.”

“Did she ever find out?” Lana asked softly.

“No. Maybe it’s better that way. Her dying thinking that I was some kind of upstanding guy. It doesn’t matter anymore. That was years ago.”

Lana asked how. He thought he was going to get choked up again, that it was still going to be more than he could own up to. But after seeing Lana break down, how even the mightiest fell, he didn’t see the point. And so it came out, the night at the Metro station, the ferals. Watching her pulled along the floor by three of them, Duncan falling out of her hands and laying helpless on the ground. She was screaming for help as they bit into her, ripped at her clothing first, and then the flesh beneath, blood spraying across the floor.

Duncan was crying now, and more ferals were coming. Some of the ones surrounding Lucy heard him, his noises. MacCready made the decision. He didn’t fire a single bullet. Just threw himself forward and scooped up Duncan’s little form and then ran, ran as fast as he could in the dark, up the stairs, and out into the night. Lucy’s screams followed him all of the way. They followed him for six months straight, whether he was awake or asleep. Sometimes he thought he still heard them, but her voice was gone now. Now it was only a feeling, a soundless shot of despair. Her mouth would open in his dreams, and only his own scream came out.

He told Lana then too, that they’d been expecting another baby. He told her that the thought of getting Lana pregnant had him so twisted up inside that he couldn’t unravel himself anymore.

“Maybe we should have died there,” he said. “Maybe it would have been better that way.”

“You saved your son’s life.” She didn’t need to elaborate. He knew what that meant to her.

Lana took his hand, squeezing it for a second before putting the toy soldier back into his palm and holding it there. “Mac, I can’t take this. It’s special to you.”

He closed her fingers around it instead. “That’s exactly why I need you to have it. Promise me that you’ll be safe. I can’t … I can’t lose someone for a second time.”

Her hand came up to his face. She was leaning in, her lips so close to his, their clouds of breath mixing in the air.

“Mummmmmm!!”

MacCready was going to throw Codsworth off of this cliff.

“Oh mum! Oh I was looking everywhere for you! I spotted you from all the way down there!” Codsworth was zooming up the road to them, his three arms flailing out in such a way that it was impossible to tell which one was pointing to “there.” “ _You should not be out of bed, you’re recovering!_ ”

Lana must have felt Mac’s body tense, that he was about to angrily stand up, because she moved her hand to his shoulder and kept it there firmly. “We were just discussing plans for tonight, Codsworth,” she said. Her voice was chipper, and MacCready knew the mask was back. He’d seen the pain now, knew it didn’t really go away.

“There is absolutely nothing more important than your safe recovery, mistress. I implore you to return to bed at once, where I can properly cater to your needs.” Codsworth was huffing now, sounding more human than ever. He was close enough now to make the clear, cold air of the hill smell only of burning fuel.

“I was hoping you could help me with something else actually, something I can only entrust to you.” Mac winced at the implication; did she handle them both the exact same way?

“Well, I … I …” MacCready wondered if all Handys bumbled so much, or if Lana should have exchanged this one when she had the chance.

“I was hoping to throw a dinner party tonight. A way of thanking my new associates for all of their help. You always prepared the best dinners for our parties. What do you think Codsworth? Should we?”

A weird rattling noise came out of Codsworth, and MacCready thought the big ugly can was about to blow a gasket right then and there. “Oh mum … oh, you haven’t thrown a dinner party in 210 years, 7 months and 12 days. I’d be honored … oh but that is, we haven’t _nearly_ the quality of supplies we did back then. But we do have quite a stockpile at the moment … oh my! Oh why yes, of course! Oh oh …”

MacCready finally jumped in, tired of the babbling. “You should probably start now, huh? Lots to do!”

Codsworth didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm in Mac’s voice. “Yes of course, you’re right. I shan’t embarrass mum by being underprepared! I’m off at once mum! Oh and please, Mr. MacCready, do take mum back to bed. She will certainly need to rest before entertaining tonight.”

Codsworth hadn’t even finished speaking before he’d begun zooming back down the hill.

“Was that smart?” Mac asked.

Lana shrugged. “It’ll get him out of our hair for the day. Besides, I meant it. I want to thank everyone. And I guess I’m feeling a little nostalgic for something … familiar.”

She was looking off into the horizon again, one hand holding the wooden soldier, and the other spinning the gold ring.

Mac thought he would feel relief having Lana back. Instead he felt more weighted than ever.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Sorry for the delay! Hope I can get this thing wrapped up soon. Thanks for all of the encouragement. :)

Sending Codsworth off with a mission bought them some time alone, but not enough.

They sat for as long as they could, watching the morning grow lighter, talking quietly. Lana caught him up on her recent adventures. Mac did the same, telling her his stories about Strong and Cait and Piper. Those made her smile.

Eventually the morning became bright, and Sanctuary Hills below came alive with noise, people going about their work, trade, cooking up food and letting the smell float up to them. It made MacCready’s mouth water, but Lana claimed she wasn’t hungry.

He suggested they try a little shooting practice, and she took to that. They moved further down the hill, found some shade under the trees, and Mac let her shoot with his rifle. She’d gotten much better; she credited it to everything he’d taught her. He taught her a few new things. He only hoped that they would protect her when he couldn’t.

Eventually the noise from their shooting led people to them, people looking for Lana, needing Lana. She thanked Mac, not quite meeting him in the eye, and he knew she didn’t mean the shooting lesson.

He didn’t go back to town for most of the day. He was angry. He understood her needing other people, needing their connections, things he couldn’t provide. Maybe he even understood her pushing him away. Hell, he hadn’t let anyone else in since Lucy. If not for Lana, he wasn’t sure if he would have ever let anyone else in again.

He wasn’t even expecting a relationship from her. She was out of his reach in a lot of ways, some kind of force of nature that was capable of leaving both hope and destruction everywhere she went. He had nothing to offer her but his gun and his heart. She took both and then left them here, in this town, dumped alongside some unknowable amount of old feelings and memories.

It didn’t matter that he understood these things. It didn’t stop the terrible ache in his chest from being distanced from her. And maybe he didn’t totally understand that part, but just the idea of it, the chance that she’d come back and let him in again, let him feel that warmth and peace that only came when she was giving it, was enough to make him wait, miserably, for just a few bare scraps. Those few seconds of her lips on his, the warmth of her hand.

He was starting to realize how lonely he really was and how much being alone scared him.

The logical thing to do was spend the day being grumpy and alone. He’d been walking around the woods behind Sanctuary for awhile without running into as much as a bloatfly when he was discovered. He heard the rustling from not far off, closer than he felt comfortable with honestly; but the four-legged gait was unmistakable. Dogmeat came crashing out from behind a bush of hubflowers. He padded up to MacCready, tongue out of a seemingly wide grin as he solicited a neck scratch.

“You again, huh?” Mac knelt down and gave the dog a hug, letting him slobber all over his face. Dogmeat yipped at him excitedly. Mac had the sudden regret that he’d never had a dog. He’d never had the food to keep one. As he let Dogmeat lead him around, first through the woods and then down across a narrow gap in the stream, he could only think of how Duncan should have a dog. Duncan should be able to wander around just like this, splashing his boots in the river, chasing Dogmeat up and down the banks of Sanctuary, dragging a stick all around the outside walls of Strong’s hut, (who shouted “ _stupid humans!_ ” from inside, but Mac was long gone by the time he came out).

He led Dogmeat outside the bar area, where the same bartender was there with his dumb sunglasses, leaning up against a fence and talking to Nick. Mac pressed his face next to Dogmeat’s ear, whispering for him to bite the bartender in the ass. Mac egged him on until Dogmeat barked excitedly, ears down, and made a run for the bartender. He saw the bartender scramble, falling over the other side of the fence just a few seconds before Dogmeat cleared straight over it. While everyone was distracted by the sight, MacCready ran behind the bar and grabbed a single bottle, whatever was closest, before retreating behind the corner of the house next door. He laughed, rolling in the grass as he listened to the bartender squeal out “Yeeeoooowch!!” He could also hear Nick yelling out, “MacCready!” in a scolding voice.

Dogmeat came running back a few moments later, and together they ran behind a few houses before hopping a broken fence into one of the backyard gardens. Mac stole a couple of mutfruits, then took them down by the banks near the water purifiers to split up their lunch, watching the people and Brahmin traveling back and forth over the bridge, Dogmeat splashing in the river to clean the sticky mutfruit off of his muzzle. For a brief moment he remembered what it was like to be a kid again. It was somehow still in there, not yet washed out by the bleakness of life. He couldn’t tell if that was a good thing. Not caring either way was a small relief.

He was still there, shaving his beard with a combat knife, the emptied liquor bottle laying next to him, when Nick found him. The sun was starting to set, casting all of Sanctuary in a fiery red glow. Nick sighed when he saw, or maybe smelled, him. “Time for dinner,” he said, coming to stand next to Mac, watching Dogmeat sniffing around the stream.

“Oh boy. Can’t wait.” Mac continued to sit there, scratching down his chin with the sharp blade.

“You okay, kid?”

“Have you ever known me to be okay?”

Nick crouched down next to him, and Dogmeat came padding up for attention, his fur spiky and wet. “Well, I suppose not,” he said, petting Dogmeat with his wiry hand. “I suppose I was expecting you to be okay once you were with the missus again.”

He sighed, feeling the shape of his beard with his hands. “There is no ‘with’ Lana, there’s only ‘desperately chasing Lana, probably to your own suicide, either by jumping into a war you have no hope of winning, or by miserable depression in this dump of a town.’ Sadly, I don’t even seem to be unique in that category.” Guess that bottle of wine hadn’t been a good idea.

“You spend a lot of time being wasted and feeling sorry for yourself, kid. Besides … the town ain’t half bad. Now come on. If Sanctuary hasn’t been stimulating enough for you, I guarantee this dinner party will give you something to think about.”

Mac didn’t think he could possibly get more irritated. Or drunk.

\--

He was wrong on both counts, of course.

He eventually did follow Nick back to Lana’s place. Codsworth had put together a bunch of mismatched furniture in the backyard into one long table with many settings. He’d hung some stringed lights outside and placed lanterns around. It was nice honestly, pretty and pleasant, and the lights reminded Mac a little bit of Lamplight.

He hated it immediately.

There were a bunch of open wine bottles already on the table, and Mac just helped himself to another entire bottle, taking a swig to claim it, before flopping down into a chair at one end of the table. Some people were already seated, including Garvey and Piper, who both gave him identical dirty looks.

“Hey now, can’t be hogging up all the fine liquor, even if you are Lana’s bitch.” Someone snatched the bottle out of his hand. Mac’s fists clenched up until he saw it was Cait. She took a long swig out of the bottle and then slammed it on the table between them, taking a seat next to him.

“You ready for this, baby face?” She smiled at him. She had that twinkle in her eye, the one he had the chance to admire for a brief moment when she was punching him in the face, until his eye swelled shut.

“Not even a little bit.” He took another swig from the bottle. When he lowered it, Lana was at the other side of the table, watching him. She looked incredibly tired, and not particularly pleased. He tipped his hat to her. She’d come out with Hancock and one other man. The bartender. “HEY! Lemoneyes! How’s the ass feeling?” Mac yelled at the man, causing everyone to look between the two. During the awkward pause, he heard Hancock’s dry cackle and Nick’s disappointed sigh.

The “bartender” raised his hands in a peace gesture. His pompadour was just a tad crooked. “Hey, MacCready is it? All right, maybe I deserved that. You’re lookin’ good today by the way, real hydrated.”

Mac’s expression must have been murderous at this point, because he could see the whites in Lana’s eyes from his periphery. “Everyone, this is Deacon,” Lana interrupted, eyebrows furrowing and looking at Mac. “If you haven’t already met.”

Oh, she was going to regret this dinner party idea, all right.

Codsworth leaned one of his eyeballs out of a kitchen window at this point. “Welcome, guests! Please do have a seat and I’ll be serving the appetizers promptly!”

Lana started moving towards Mac’s side of the table, probably to reprimand him or do damage control, or both. There were two empty seats to his left. He was looking down at them, wondering how much shit he was going to get by having Lana seated on one side and Cait on the other, when the chairs shook and were covered by a shadow. He leaned back, looking up at the obstruction.

Paladin Dense was looking down at him. Mac could only see his eyes and his bushy eyebrows from this angle. Because he was wearing his power armor.

“You’re kidding, right?” Mac asked him.

Before Danse could answer, Lana was there next to him, looking from one to the other tensely. Danse nodded to her. “Soldier.” Mac made a disgusted noise and took another swig from the wine.

He could see Lana squeeze her eyes shut for a moment, before taking the seat further from MacCready. Danse looked down at the only seat left, between the two of them. It was a regular plastic lawn chair with two arms.

Lana had one hand over her eyes now. “Codsworth, would you mind helping the Paladin …?” she called into the house.

“You wouldn’t,” Mac said. Cait was snickering. Within seconds, Codsworth came zooming outside with a metal stool. “Here you are, sir! Nice and sturdy!” He replaced the plastic chair with the metal seat, making sure to give it wide berth. Mac stared, open mouthed, as Danse sat at the table. Danse stared back, maintaining eye contact as he slowly lowered himself onto the stool.

“Is it Brotherhood regulation to wear power armor to a meal?” Deacon asked from across the table. Mac nodded his head towards Danse, very much interested in the answer.

“It depends,” Danse answered, annoyed.

“On what?”

“On the meal.”

“I think that means breakfast is in the nude,” Deacon fake-whispered to Curie, who was seated next to him. “Really? Isn’t that quite unsanitary?” she whispered back, completely serious.

“You know you look like an asshole, yes?” MacCready chimed in cheerfully.

“The only people who look like assholes are the unprepared,” Danse answered disdainfully.

“So you brought a can opener with you then? Do you need Codsworth to come cut you out?”

“I’d like to see what’s packed in there,” Cait threw in.

“I suppose I should have shown up embarrassingly drunk. That’s your method of preparation, isn’t it?” Danse replied.

“This is going well,” Piper groaned from the far side of the table.

“The General really deserves more respect than this,” Preston added.

“We can solve this right now, easy. Eight tabs of Day Tripper in the punch bowl, you guys will get along juuuust fine,” Hancock offered, leaning forward to pour wine into his glass.

Lana had put both hands over her eyes at this point, elbows leaned against the table.

Codsworth came out again, this time with two trays held up. His third arm went about transferring plates from the trays onto the table. “Here we are! Smoked mirelurk mousse canapes, and squirrel melon salad! First of ten courses! I hope you have all brought your appetites!

“That sounds disgusting!” said Cait.

“Hey, that doesn’t sound half bad,” Nick muttered.

“You don’t even eat!”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the thought …”

Just as Codsworth was putting the weird grayish mousse pastries and meat-fruit salad in front of MacCready, a minuteman came rushing into the backyard. “General! Mister Garvey! We have reports of a large group of raiders moving in on Abernathy Farm! They’re requesting assistance!”

It was hard to follow exactly what happened next. Half of the people at the table turned to Lana and began speaking at once, some standing, some leaning over the table, all offering her, asking her, _begging_ her to take them with her. MacCready was in that last category. Without thinking he’d leaned towards her, saying, “Don’t leave me again.”

Danse had the time to look sideways at MacCready and say, “Looks like some of us were prepared for this.”

Mac knew she’d heard him, even over Danse and Cait and Garvey, Curie and Piper. He knew because he saw her drop her hands and look right at him. But the others were incessantly speaking, one over the other, voices raising higher, until Lana just stood up and backed her chair away from the table. She said only one word, quietly, one name; “Nick.” Her tone was pleading, and not a little bit tired.

“That’s my cue, boys and girls,” Nick said, rising from the table and adjusting his hat. “Promise you’ll all behave.”

Someone actually replied “No.”

Mac was furious. His eyes burned holes into Lana, but she didn’t turn around once as she walked away, following the minuteman and Nick around the house.

“Why do I feel like she left with the only voice of reason that was sitting at this table?” Deacon asked.

“That’s because she did,” Piper sighed.

“This is ridiculous. I should go and see how I can help,” Garvey said, making to leave the table.

“Madame put so much into having this dinner for us to share! I think we should stay,” Curie argued adorably.

“Lana didn’t do shit. That tin can over there’s been playing house wife all day,” Hancock laughed, lighting up a cigarette instead of touching the canapes.

“It is the same difference,” Curie huffed.

Cait took a swig from the bottle of wine and then held it out to Mac. “Looks like you can use this, love.” He accepted it, drinking. He knew this was going to go down a bad road, but it seemed out of his hands at this point.

Danse was still staring at him, disdainfully watching him drink.

“Do you have a problem?” Mac spat at him.

“I do. I take issue with the things I’ve heard about you now that I’ve seen you.”

“You haven’t seen the half of it, bozo.”

“Sure ain’t seen what Lana’s seen,” Cait snickered.

“Perhaps that’s the problem,” Danse said matter-of-factly. “As a female civilian, she may be prone to exaggerating the qualities of her sexual partner.”

“Danse, you can’t make assumptions about ‘female civilians,’” Piper jumped in. “I mean, you’re probably right in this case, but you can’t make sweeping assumptions about _all_ female civilians.”

“Thank you, Piper. Glad to know you have my back,” Mac grumbled, flicking a canape off of his plate.

“You don’t have to be so unbearable all the time, MacCready. You’re not the only one who gets left behind, you know. You don’t have some monopoly on Lana’s time just because you had sex with her.” Piper huffed, showing genuine upset.

“Yeah, and you don’t have the monopoly on that either,” Hancock chuckled.

MacCready spat wine all over the table. “What did you just say?”

“Oops.” Deacon added.

“Huh. Guess you didn’t know that one.”

“What are you trying to say, Hancock?! You ..?!” Mac was standing now, leaning over the table towards Hancock. He’d probably knocked over half a dozen things, but he was too drunk to tell.

“Hey, I’m not saying it was me! But you know, someone at this table,” Hancock laughed, leaning back into his brightly colored lawn chair, enjoying Mac’s bright red face.

Garvey stood from the table now. “This is disrespectful. I’m going to go make myself useful,” he said, storming off.

“Codthworth, theeth are delighthful,” Deacon yelled with a full mouth of grayish paste.

Danse stood as well, his smug, smiling face hovering above MacCready. “Perhaps Lana found your skills to be exaggerated as well,” he said.

Mac snapped. He took a step up onto his plastic chair, putting him a head above Danse, and in one smooth arc, sent his fist flying down into Danse’s face.

A lot of things happened at once. Danse immediately had a hold of Mac’s jacket; fast enough that he could have done some serious damage to Mac if he’d wanted to. But he hesitated, just long enough for Piper and Deacon to step between the two of them. He was red in the face and even redder in the nose, which was trickling blood as he screamed down into Piper’s face about “showing this miserable delinquent the consequences of striking a Brotherhood officer.” Meanwhile Mac was screaming down from the chair, “ _He’s wearing power armor to dinner!_ ”

Mac felt arms grab his waist from behind, pulling him down off of the chair, the lapel of his jacket making a small tear as it was wrenched from Danse’s metal grip. He turned to see Cait holding him, bright green eyes only on him. She kept her strong arms firmly around Mac, her body pressed against his side. “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered into his ear, before pulling him away from the table, away from the house, from the others, from the noise, and from Mac’s last clear memory of the night.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of rough sex in this part. 
> 
> Thanks for reading :)

He felt pain before he could even open his eyes, and so the first motion he made waking up was a wince. It didn’t help that his eyes opened to intensely bright sunlight. Hadn’t he nailed up an old flag last week to block the light? He felt the heat of the sunlight on his face, then his arms, his chest. Hell, he felt like he was burning up. But when he tried to move, he couldn’t; he was pinned down, heavy.

He realized something else was touching his face. It was hair. Warm, waving locks stuck to his sweaty neck, tickling his cheek.

He must be dreaming. He smiled for a second, moving to cradle Lana’s head against his chest, to make the dream last just a little longer. But as soon as he went to lift his hand he felt searing pain; his arm was twisted behind him, dead and sore. This definitely was not a dream.

He pulled away from the body draped against his and caught the mass of red hair against his shoulder. Cait.

They were both naked, cramped together in his tiny bed. In his tiny bed, in his tiny bedroom with no door. He looked across the hall towards Piper’s room, listened. The rest of the house looked dark, stayed silent.

He disentangled himself from Cait and sat up as best he could. His room was a wreck. One of his tables was broken and leaning precariously against the far wall. All of the bottles, the ashtray and cigarette butts it had held were now scattered on the floor. The flag was half torn down. He could see his rifle on the ground, along with a trail of their clothes leading into the hallway.

As he sat there slack-jawed, Cait stirred next to him. She stretched out like a cat, as best as she could on the tiny bed, smiling up at him. “Mornin’ sunshine. Gods, I feel like shit,” she muttered.

MacCready was at a loss for how to answer her when his breath caught in his throat. His hand almost reached her skin before he snatched it back. “Cait, wha … what are these? What the hell happened?”

Cait looked down at her arms, her wrists. They were littered with bruises. She laughed, her head dropping back against the bed, allowing Mac to notice even more bruises up her neck and jaw. “Oh MacCready … I thought you might surprise me, ‘specially after that show last night, but boy did I underestimate ‘ya. You really do know how to show a gal a good time.”

“I … I did this? I didn’t realize …”

“Oh don’t be daft. We can go another round or two if you like,” Cait grinned, pulling one of her legs up and wrapping it around Mac’s side. “I think I have a few more ways I could surprise _you_.”

Mac thought he was going to be sick. He couldn’t look at the bruises for a second longer. “I think I need some air,” he muttered out, pulling himself out of the bed and feeling around the floor for his clothes.

“Suit yerself,” Cait yawned, curling up into his one thin bed sheet, “but don’t come around waking me up.” She was gorgeous, statuesque, but Mac couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

He managed to finish dressing in the living room. There was no sign of Piper anywhere, but he had to wonder. She must have been home at some point during the night. She would have seen them together, after or during …

He had to admit to feeling completely ashamed of himself. He’d spent all this time being angry about people knowing about Lana and him, and yet here he was, making a big public mess of himself. And Lana …

How the hell was he going to face Lana?

He grabbed a gun, tucking it out of sight, and a water bottle and went out into their backyard plot. He expected to see Piper there like she usually was, pulling up weeds, planting new carrots, but she wasn’t.

There wasn’t much to do on their plot with how well he and Piper maintained it day to day, but he cleaned it up and worked anyway. Flashes of last night started creeping up on him. The dinner, yeah, and the fight with Danse. He probably looked like a total asshole, but that was nothing new for him. Fuck that guy, Mac thought. Afterwards, stumbling with Cait down the street, laughing, kissing, tossing the wine bottle towards a house with a crash. More asshole-ness.

Then the flashes became darker, more painful. The throbbing on the side of his jaw as he clenched his mouth while digging, the toothache underneath; and there was Cait, naked and radiant, straddling him in his bed and punching him hard across the mouth. The long scratches from his collarbone down to his chest, that burned now as his sweat-soaked shirt clung to them; and him behind her this time, one hand around her throat as she laughed wickedly, squirming under him, his other hand twisting her arm behind her …

He sat down in the dirt at that point and gave up on the garden, drinking his water so fast he could drown. He looked up at the window above him, his window, and wondered how Cait was sleeping in there peacefully. He felt dirty, sick, like he needed to rip out of his own broken body and flee, never to be seen again. He’d never thought of himself as someone who enjoyed pain, took pleasure from it. Clearly Cait was; he supposed there was nothing wrong with that. And yet sex with her only reminded him of the Gunners; the power struggles, the need for control, the egos. He’d betrayed himself by falling back into a space he didn’t want to be in anymore.

Worse than that, he’d betrayed Lana, hadn’t he? He’d done it only to spite her, for leaving him again, and if he believed Hancock, for sleeping with someone else. But all of that was after he’d gotten drunk again against her wishes, and continued to make a mess in the neat little community she’d built. Evening the score hadn’t made him feel any better. What he really wanted was to be that man that Lana needed, and he’d proven that he wasn’t.

Failing to be a better man seemed to be the running theme in his life lately.

He decided rest was the opposite of what he needed. He needed to not think, not feel. He listened to the sound of hammering and walked toward it, coming up to Sturges and a few other people working on a house. He muttered about needing something to do. Sturges gave him a hesitant once-over, but he seemed happy to take up the offer. He gave out the orders, having Mac help him move lumber, hold boards as he hammered them into place, pass supplies up to the guys working the roof. It was hard labor, and he was dripping sweat and burning up under the sun, but it was the good kind of pain, a punishment he could accept. When the others took a break, they begged him to give it a rest but he ignored them, continuing the work alone. Sturges laughed while he sat and ate his lunch, inviting Mac to work with them any day, get paid in a few meals and even fewer caps.

Mac was leaning over to measure a piece of lumber when something grabbed his neck from behind. He was lifted into the air faster than he could react to, choking at the pressure, and as he was being spun around the only thing he saw was Sturges dropping his jaw and his lunch, eyes round as plates.

When the spinning stopped he was faced with Strong’s big, green face. A rather angry and confused looking face, even by Strong’s standards. Mac could do nothing but pull at the giant hand around his neck, trying to counter the weight of his body hanging from the vice-like grip.

“Little human tell Strong that you have milk of human kindness. They tell Strong that you take it all for yourself!”

“W-what the h-are you t-talking about?”

The hand around MacCready’s neck squeezed tighter.

“They say Lana had the milk, but you take it. Where is it?”

“I … d-don … god’am milk!”

“Red coat say you hide it! Say you won’t share Lana’s milk!”

Strong was getting more and more agitated, and MacCready was positive that his neck couldn’t take much more pressure. Spots of light were dancing all over his vision and his limbs were growing weak. He did the only thing he could think of to make Strong stop.

With what little strength he had left, he pulled the pistol hidden under his shirt and pushed the barrel against one of Strong’s very displeased eyelids. He was certainly glad of his new resolution to never go anywhere in Sanctuary without a gun. 

His first clue that it was a terrible idea came when, from the edges of his senses, he could tell that several people around them were screaming for them to stop, to calm down. It was definitely a gamble, and he could see that now as he stared into Strong’s enraged green face and felt his hot, angry breath turn into a deep growl.

“You ... let go … and I talk,” Mac managed to breathe out.

To Mac’s great surprise, his bluff worked, and Strong released his grip. Mac fell on his ass rather ungracefully, choking for air with his face flushed. Most people were hanging back, too scared of what could happen; Strong was still clearly angry, letting out a single yell for Mac to “SPEAK!”, and MacCready was still holding a gun. Sturges and the other guys on his crew were there trying to pull MacCready to his feet and away from the angry mutant, but Mac pushed them off of him. Still coughing, he stood himself up to his full height (still a full three or four heads shorter than Strong) and addressed the angry supermutant.

He waited until he could catch his breath again to speak. “Look, I don’t know what this person said to you, but I don’t have the milk of human kindness. I know that _I of all people_ don’t have it. And the only thing I can tell you is this; kindness can never be taken. It can only be given. And maybe Lana does have that power in her, I mean, look at all the things that she’s done,” he said, his arms thrown out at the town and the people around him. “That ... that kindness that built up this town, that built up ALL of those towns that she’s helped, all of those people that she continues to help every day. That’s a power I could never even fathom having as my own. And if she does have it, that selfless, bottomless strength that only a human being can possess, it’s in her power alone to share it. A man like me could never, ever steal that from her.”

Mac was suddenly aware of the silence around him when he swallowed and could hear the scratching of his throat clearly. A silence despite the large crowd of people that had gathered around to see what all the commotion was and, to his horror, were around to hear him pathetically grovel over Lana to an angry supermutant. He pulled his hat down over his eyes, trying hard to avoid all of the gazes staring straight at him, and tucked the pistol into the back of his pants. He was hoping to make a quick exit before this whole mess got any worse, but Strong’s booming voice stopped him.

“Mack Ree Dee.”

“Yes?” 

“You are related to Mack Beth. You are brothers, yes?”

“What? No!” Mac looked up and was somewhat worried to see Strong assessing him carefully.

“I do not understand your words. Supermutant can take anything, no need to wait for give. But you are warrior, like Mack Beth. I will find what this means, the thing you say. Why human cannot take kindness. I will find kindness and then take it, because supermutant is better than human.”

Strong said his piece defiantly, and then promptly walked off, people diving out of his way to make a path. He left completely absorbed by MacCready’s words and seemingly undisturbed by the fact that MacCready had threatened to shoot him in the face.

Mac was hoping that the crowd would disperse quickly now that the spectacle was over – and some of them did walk away, certainly. But not enough. In fact, some of them approached him instead. Sturges patted him on the back and commended the “size of his balls.” It took him a moment to recognize a few of the other faces. Piper was there. She looked like she wanted to say something, her mouth opening and closing a few times, but no words came out. He wondered how much she’d seen of that, too, but her muteness suggested that the answer was all of it. He couldn’t blame her. After what she probably knew about him and Cait, he was sure he was making a real good impression.

Hancock pushed his way forward. “Hey there kid. You all right? You wanna get out of this limelight?”

Mac just nodded, appreciative. Hancock put an arm across his shoulders and addressed the crowd, saying “All right folks. Shows over. Let’s buy this man a drink.”

“No – no drinks,” Mac responded.

“Well, look at you,” Hancock smiled at him. “You decide to clean up your act, or you still drunk from last night?”

“Maybe both,” Mac said miserably. He gave Hancock a good look and realized something. “Hey, Strong said something about a human in a red coat, telling him I stole Lana’s milk. Was it …?”

Hancock’s black eyes went through a few different emotions before settling on total amusement. “You mean, someone set you up here? To die a horrible death at the strangling hands of a delusional supermutant?” 

“Well … I guess,” Mac said, just realizing the severity of it.

“Good gravy, boy, you got some real adulating fans out here,” Hancock was laughing heartily. “Lord I wish I could claim that ingenuity. That’s some fucked up, maniacal thinking. Maybe on a real good cocktail of Mentats and Psycho.” He seemed to actually consider that for a moment, and it scared the crap out of Mac.

“But I can’t say it was me. For one thing, I ain’t no human. I’m a ghoul. Loud and proud, get that straight. And secondly,” Hancock let go of his shoulders to straighten out the lapels of his coat. “This here coat is an alizarin crimson, you dig? Just a hint more on the purple scale than your plain ol’ _red_ …”

As the crowd turned to disperse, Mac noticed that some of them were slowing down and turning in the same direction. And that’s how he spotted her, standing at the very back of the crowd, making the volume of whispers grow around them.

“Ah, shit,” Hancock chuckled. “Not out of the gauntlet yet. Come see me later,” he said, giving Mac’s shoulder one last squeeze before leaving too.

Mac made the walk of shame over to Lana. She looked tired, and rather confused. Just like Piper, she seemed to be trying to say something for a moment, but it never came out.

“Hey,” he offered, pathetically.  

“Hey …”

It took them a moment, but then they said simultaneously, “We need to talk.” At least the awkwardness of it made them both crack a smile.

They weren’t far from the makeshift garage she used for her power armor, and so she led the way to it. It didn’t have a door, but it was cool and shaded and undisturbed; from across the street Mac could see her house was buzzing with activity, minutemen and Codsworth visible through the windows.

When Mac turned to Lana, he found her staring at him. She seemed to be studying him carefully, and didn’t say a word or look away even when he stared back at her. He had to admit, it was a relief to be staring at her, at the gorgeous brown eyes, the inquisitive furrowing of her brow, the pursed lips that she made whenever she was thinking. He’d been missing her a lot, and he was sad to have to disappoint that sweet face instead of kissing it endlessly.

But her staring was starting to unnerve him. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

Her pursed lips formed a tiny smile. “I’m thinking about you.”

“And?”

“And that you still manage to surprise me.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No,” she smiled. “Not at all. I meet so many people these days. Only some of them surprise me. And you keep doing it.”

The way she looked at him then made a shiver run down his spine, and he considered, just for a fraction of a second, of not telling her what he’d done. What could this moment have been if he hadn’t made such a big mistake? But that was impossible, and he decided it was better to get it over with and not prolong the agony.

“Look, I … need to tell you something. I really fu … er, messed up last night, and I just … I regret it, and I can’t express how sorry I am, but I know … I’ll understand if you … just …”

Well, he was mucking this up. She looked somewhat amused by his rambling. “Go on,” she said.

“I … I slept with Cait.” He couldn’t look her in the eye. He had to look down, away, anywhere else.

“You slept with Cait.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.” He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for her to put him to shame.

“Why are you sorry? Was it that bad?” She poked at the bruise that must have been obvious on his jaw, making him wince. “This looks kind of bad …”

“Wait – what?” He looked back at her face, and she was smiling at him. He searched it and it was a real, amused smile, not a secretly furious one, as he half expected.

“Look, Mac … I get what you’re doing. And I appreciate it, I really do. But you and I … we didn’t agree to be a … a thing. I don’t even think I could have that now if I wanted to. I would never presume to tell you who you could or couldn’t be with. Cait is an incredible woman, and a good friend. I’m happy if you two enjoy each other’s, er, company.”

She sighed, and continued. “If there’s anything I want you to apologize for, it’s for getting wasted when I asked you to sober up. I trust you Mac. A lot. But I meant it when I said I need you functional.”

“You’re right, of course. I was angry and acting up. Maybe I need a way to release all of this tension, but I promise it won’t be that anymore.”

She smirked at him, teasing, “Acting up. Well, you are still a kid, after all.”

“Do you really think that about me?”

She didn’t respond, just continued showing him that know-it-all, overbearingly pretty smile.

“Are you at least going to ask me to apologize for punching Danse?”

She laughed. “Yes, I heard about that. You're making a good effort at undoing all of my hard work with the Brotherhood. So will you apologize?”

“No, of course not. But I feel like I’m getting off a little too easily here,” he said.

“You say that now,” she said, smile unwavering. He wasn’t entirely sure it was innuendo, but his heart beat faster at the mere hope that it was.

Mac took a second before continuing, rubbing a hand along his sore, bruised neck. He saw her eyes follow his hand and felt just a tad self-conscious in his sweaty, dirty state. Lana’s lingering looks seemed to say that she didn’t mind.

“So … if you can’t presume to tell me who not to sleep with, I suppose I can’t presume to tell you either?”

Lana blushed a little at that, but raised her chin defiantly to him. “No, you can’t. It’s none of your business how I choose to spend my time.”

“That might be true,” he agreed, nodding his head in mock contemplation. “But, in the spirit of mutual honesty, I could ask you if …” he trailed off.

She was blushing in earnest now. “Mac … there hasn’t been anyone … since you.”

He moved closer to her now. “Then that’s what I should have done too. And I regret that I didn’t keep it that way.”

She met his eyes and that look was there again, the one that made his whole body weak. “You really do surprise me sometimes,” she whispered.

He caught her lips, and it was sparks just like the first time. He didn’t care that people could probably look in and see them, he didn’t care that he still felt wholly unworthy of her time, and he didn’t care that in the end, maybe the two of them weren’t “a thing” and didn’t amount to much more than he and Cait did. It was enough to have this moment, with her lips and her body pressed against his with as much longing as his own.

He was ready this time, though. He wasn’t going to screw this up with his personal failings anymore. He wasn’t going to be just a distraction. He broke the kiss tenderly, taking one last peck against her now-puffy lips, and pulled himself away just far enough to look her straight in the eye. “You said you needed to speak with me, too. What was it about?”

His soberness seemed to surprise her just as much as his vulnerability did. It took her a moment to collect herself, straightening her vault suit just a tad, before finding the words.

“There's something I need to ask your opinion of. A decision I have to make.”

“Shoot,” he said.

“I know what I need to get into the Institute - a machine that would teleport me in. I showed the plans to the Railroad, and they know they can build it.”

“What’s the hitch?”

“I could ask the Brotherhood to build it instead. They would be greatly indebted to me for it, and I could control the terms of what happens next. Which is almost certainly that the Brotherhood takes out the Institute for me.”

“It would be giving them a lot of power. Are you sure you could control them?”

“No. Even now, my standing with them is tenuous. I don’t know that I trust Maxson’s word, even with as much debt as he already owes me.”

“Do you have any other options?”

She looked at him, wheels turning. “Yes … I could build it myself. With the Minutemen. It’s a lot of risk, but …” she sighed. “I suppose it’s all a great risk no matter what I choose. I have no idea what’s going to happen once I make contact with the Institute. All I know is that just about every person up here, human or synth, hates the Institute and wants to see it burn. All I can hope to do is to find my son and get him back safely before it’s too late. 

“I’m not much for foresight, but I’ll give it a shot here,” Mac said, scratching under his hat. He was quiet for a moment, before a thought hit him. “When you first helped the Minutemen here, in Sanctuary Hills - why did you do it? You could have left them to themselves, or told them to bugger off, but you were the one who made sure they stayed here. Everyone says so.”

Lana answered slowly. “Because I knew it was safe. And they needed to be safe.”

“Did you know know it was safe? You’d just come out of the vault, hadn’t you?”

“... No. I didn’t know. Not for sure.”

“Then what was it?”

Lana mulled on that for a minute. Then her eyes went dark, shiny. “It’s because it’s mine. This place is mine. And I _wanted_ it to be safe.”

“I think you’ve always had the right instinct, Lana. Knowing the right way to control a situation, knowing how to lead people. I don’t think that instinct is going to lead you astray. Don’t let anyone else convince you that they have more control than you do.”

Her dark eyes met his, and even in the shade of the garage, the intensity of her look burned right through him. He’d seen her determined before and he’d seen her grit, but this was something else. It was probably the most intimidating thing he’d ever laid eyes on, and he'd had to talk his way out of death by supermutant just moments before.

They were interrupted by a hovering Minuteman hat who clearly wanted Lana’s attention. Mac had already expected to be interrupted by someone - in Sanctuary, Lana spent the entirety of her days being interrupted - and he was glad that he only had a possessive hand on Lana’s hip when it happened. If they’d been interrupted a few minutes earlier, he was sure he’d be adding to the rumor mill again, and he’d caused enough drama in the last 24 hours to fill one of those _Live & Love _ magazines.

“Ma’am,” the hat started. “You asked to call a meeting in the council room. What time should I tell everyone?”

“Ten minutes,” she said. Her eyes never left Mac’s face. “I’ve made my decision.”

The hat left in a hurry. Mac pulled the hand on her hip back until their bodies were touching. “The council room?” he teased.

“That’s right, the council room,” she said, crossing her arms. “I believe this will be the first time you’re invited to it?”

“Uh huh. You must be pretty desperate if you’re asking _me_ to attend your little hat convention.”

“I might be pretty desperate,” she said, uncrossing her arms. She pressed her chest against his, her lips just barely touching his neck, and a groan escaped his throat against his will.

“You really had to tell him ten minutes?”

“I figured we’d get into trouble if I said any amount greater than that.”

He laughed, squeezing her hips tightly. “Wait, you thought it was going to stop me from _trying_?”

\---

They ended up being ten minutes late to the meeting. The “council room” was in a newly built wooden shack, one of a few with electric lights. The meeting currently consisted of eight people hanging around a large wooden table, many of whom were familiar to MacCready; there was Garvey and Sturges, and Nick and Piper - the latter  still looking a little wide-eyed and scared. Deacon had a spot at the table too, and he gave Mac an all too amused grin when he spotted him entering the room behind Lana. Danse was notably absent - meaning that Lana was choosing to keep the Brotherhood in the dark on at least some of this.

Several of them seemed surprised to see MacCready there. The rest seemed surprised to see him so filthy and not a little disheveled. Lana, to Mac’s great relief, looked completely composed. She ignored any concerned looks in Mac’s direction and moved to the head of the table like she owned the place. Which she pretty much did.

“It seems I have your attention already, so let’s just start,” Lana said, addressing the table confidently. Mac had never seen her quite so commanding.

“Deacon, I want you to thank your people for all of their aid on this, and for their offer to build the interceptor. But I’ve decided to build it right here in Sanctuary. Sturges has looked at the plans and confirmed that he can do it.”

“I can indeed,” Sturges said happily.

Right in the middle of Sanctuary - that detail caught MacCready a little off-guard. No secrecy, no distance; just a teleporter in the middle of town?

“Right here in Sanctuary?” Nick asked, voicing Mac’s thoughts. “Are you sure that’s a safe bet? You’ll pretty much be telling the world what you’re up to.”

“And maybe putting civilians at risk,” Piper added.

Deacon shook his head. “You can count on the world already knowing. There’s no way you can start building this thing without people taking notice. You’re not going to hide it from the Brotherhood, and you’re probably not even going to hide it from the Institute - not with the equipment those camps are running.”

“At least this would make a statement, then,” Garvey threw in. Mac was surprised; he would have assumed that Garvey of all people would have erred on the side of caution for the civilians, but it seemed like he was all in on Lana’s plan.

“It would, and I’ll have to thank Lana on behalf of my associates and myself,” Deacon added, “for taking the risk on this one. If the Institute got whiff that we were involved in making the teleporter, we might be compromising our whole operation. And don’t get me wrong, we’re willing to take that risk in this case, but if they think Lana’s doing this purely for personal reasons … well, we might still be able to use the element of surprise somewhere down the line.”

It seemed to be enough consensus for Lana to continue with business. “Sturges, can you walk us through the plans?”

Sturges placed a small stack of papers onto the table, then lined several pages up in particular. From where Mac stood, they looked like a complete mess.

“Geez, did a supermutant draw these?” Garvey asked.

“Well, yes, actually,” Lana responded.

“Yeah, I’m going to be redrawing these a bit,” Sturges muttered, looking tiredly at the colorful splotches and blocky, squiggled handwriting. “Anyhow,” he continued. “Most of it is straightforward - we have the majority of the materials. We’ll need some extra juice for this baby, so with your permission, I’d like to build at least one extra jenny ...”

“I’ll handle it myself tomorrow,” Lana assured him.

“Swell. Well, then we've only got two problems. One is the size of this baby; she needs a pretty big area of space. I’m talking at least a thousand square feet to be safe, and it’s gotta be flat.”

“So, the size of a small house …?” Lana asked.

“Didn’t you just finish pulling down the last of that corner house the other day?” Garvey asked.

“We sure did,” Sturges answered proudly. “But that's square in the middle of main street. Are we good with that?”

“As long as you can make it safe,” Lana said.

“‘Be doin’ my best,” Sturges assured her. “All right then. That just leaves these materials.” He pushed one of the pages closer to Lana. His finger ran down a list as he spoke. “I know for a fact that we’re short on these, and these two here - no chance of finding them on site. We’re gonna have to procure those somehow.

“I can get my people on that,” Deacon offered.

“No need,” Lana responded, taking the paper off of the table. “I know where to get them. It will be faster than sitting and waiting.”

“That’s the spirit, Charmer,” Deacon said approvingly.

“Need anything else, Sturges?” Lana asked as she rolled up the list of materials.

“Just time and some manpower.” He smiled at MacCready. “Your merc here is pretty handy. I’ll take him off of your hands, if you would.”

“Sorry, Sturges,” she said, smirking just at the corner of her mouth. “You’ll have to find your own labor. This one’s coming with me.”

“I am??” Mac asked, speaking up for the first time.

“Yep,” Lana answered as she left the room. “We’re leaving tomorrow, as soon as we have Sturges set up with a generator.”

“I’m going with her,” Mac said while pointing, being sure to rub it in before he followed Lana out of the room. But as soon as they were away from the shack, he paused in his steps, thinking. Lana noticed and stopped as well, looking back at him. “Not going to follow?” she asked, and Mac was pretty sure it was an offer.

“Yes. Ah, but first I need to see a man. Er, and a woman. About a thing.”

Lana said, “Suit yourself,” and Mac must have looked incredibly torn about it, because she walked back to give him a kiss on the cheek. “We both have a lot to do. So do it, and get some rest. You’ll need it.”

“Thanks _Charmer_ ,” he teased. She winked at him before turning and walking down the street, off to do who knows what and probably be interrupted.

Mac felt already felt anxiety at the separation - and he needed to squash that, quickly - but at the same time, he was barely able to contain his excitement. She was finally giving him another chance, she was letting go and showing her feelings. He had a sense of focus now - and he only had tonight to handle his issues and emerge as something better.


End file.
